ABSTRACT
The National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R) has indicated that 46.4% of their 9282-member sample reported a lifetime history of a mental disorder (Kessler, Berglund, Demler, Jin, & Walters, 2005a). The NCS-R showed a 12-month prevalence of 26.2% for anxiety, mood, impulse control and substance abuse disorders; 45% of these individuals met Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) criteria for two or more disorders (Kessler, Berglund, Demler, Jin, & Walters, 2005b). Furthermore, half of those individuals who said they had a mental disorder over a 12-month period reported an onset by age 14; three quarters of the individuals said their onset occurred by age 24 (Kessler et al., 2005b). The high prevalence of many psychiatric disorders, as well as their relatively early age of onset, suggests that attention to the well-being of the postsecondary student population is of paramount importance.
