Student Mental Health

on the class of honours degree obtained. Quite apart from academic considerations, the symptoms so often impair capacity for social and personal relationships, and in this way impoverish the student's life and keep him from those experiences which would encourage his development. At University College, we have collected some data about the relationship between mental health and student "wastage", and have found a significantly greater proportion, particularly of severe disturbance, amongst unsuccessful students. If our finding is generally true, the psychiatric factor in the 14% wastage in British universities must be regarded as an item of major importance in terms of community mental health. But it must be emphasised that the relationship between psychological disturbance and ability to study is a complex one, and we have plenty of examples of disturbed students who have been very successful academically, and of students who leave college, but show no signs of disturbance. For this reason, it is not usually justified to select out students