Minnesota college crowd’s health falls short of an A

A groundbreaking survey of nearly 10,000 Minnesota college students for the first time paints a detailed picture of their health -- delving far beyond the usual questions on drinking, smoking and sex.

More than one-fourth have had a mental health problem diagnosed, primarily depression and anxiety, the University of Minnesota will report today when it releases results of a survey of students at 14 Minnesota campuses. One in five women said they had been sexually assaulted at some point in their lives, an event that's linked to high rates of depression and poor academic performance.

A surprising number of students spend more than four hours a day in front of a television or at a computer screen, beyond the time they need for schoolwork. The more time they're in front of those screens, the fatter they are and the more they eat fast food.

University of Minnesota researchers who conducted the survey said the information is vital because college students are in a phase of life crucial to their future health.

Not quite teenagers and not quite adults, they are establishing the habits and behaviors that will affect them far beyond college.

"We are starting to learn that this is a unique life stage -- emerging adulthood," said Marla Eisenberg, an assistant professor at the university who studies adolescent health. There's a lot more to that phase of life than smoking and binge drinking, said Dr. Edward Ehlinger, director of Boynton Health Services at the university, who directed the survey.

There are 400,000 college students in Minnesota, more than the number of teenagers in high school. "We needed to see what the issues are among them," he said.

The university and other researchers have often surveyed college students about specific health issues such as smoking and binge drinking. But Ehlinger said this is the first state-wide survey of the college population that asked about everything from flu to gambling to condom use. It was funded in part by a grant from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota.

Officials at 14 public, private and two-year colleges provided the researchers contact information to a total of 24,000 students. Of those, 41 percent answered detailed questions on a website. Ehlinger said that each school that participated will be given the data specific to its students. But he said that researchers will not provide comparisons of results between schools.

Behavior and health

Ehlinger said that what he found most illuminating about the results were the clear links between different behaviors. An overweight and obesity rate of 38.5 percent was expected -- lower than older adults, but greater than teenagers. But 43 percent of students who said they spent four or more hours a day in front of a computer or television screen also said they were overweight. And the more hours they spent looking at a screen, the more likely they were to eat fast food.

Smoking rates among college students have been tracked for some time. In recent years public health experts have been alarmed that increasing numbers start to smoke when they get to college. This survey reveals that the age of that first cigarette is still critical. Most college students who smoke started at age 18 or 19, Ehlinger said.

"Very few start at 20," he said. "But their rates of addiction increase dramatically as they age. By the time they are 25, 55 percent [of smokers] are daily smokers."

That means, he said, that college health officials have the opportunity to target younger students to prevent them from starting in the first place, and to help older ones quit smoking before they leave campus.

He said that after 12 years at the university's health service, he was not surprised by the findings on mental health. The number of students who say they've been diagnosed with a mental health problem are in line with other reports nationally, he said. But the survey also asked where they got help, and most said they got it on campus.

"Not every college has a health service," he said. "If there were health services on campus, students would use them." The university's Boynton Health Service provides mental health counseling and also has a mental health website that is heavily used by students and their parents he said.

Finances and health

There were also clear links between students' financial and physical health. A third of the students have credit-card debt and more than half of those carry $1,000 or more per month. The higher the debt, the greater the chance of depression and poor academic performance, he said.

Ehlinger said he was pleased with some of the survey's sexual health results. Three-fourths said they had sex in the last year, but 82 percent of those students said it was with one partner or someone they intended to marry.

Condom use was at a pretty high rate of 60 percent, but was much lower for non-vaginal intercourse, he said. It shows that students understand condoms can prevent pregnancy, "but I'm not sure they understand they are used for preventing sexually transmitted diseases," he said.

Ehlinger also said that the survey made him realize that college is a great time to educate young women on what they need to know about pregnancy before they get pregnant. Birth rates among college students are quite low, but the rates shoot up after age 25. Done correctly, he said, such "pre-conception care" could help reduce the number of pre-term births and the rate of infant mortality.

But, he admitted, talking about pregnancy, childbirth and parenting to the college crowd could be a tough sell.

"How we market that will be a trick for us," he said.

Josephine Marcotty • 612-673-7394

Josephine Marcotty • marcotty@startribune.com