Making Health Happen on Campus: A Review of a Required General Education Health Course

Mental Health in College Populations: A Multidisciplinary Review of What Works, Evidence Gaps, and Paths Forward

“…Another unusually wellevaluated group peer intervention for college students is the Body Project, a dissonance-based eating disorder prevention program for young women at risk for eating disorders due to body dissatisfaction (Stice et al, 2006). Also evaluated with RCTs, it has showed clear efficacy in reducing risk factors, eating disorder symptoms, functional impairment, and future eating disorder onset over a 3-year followup (Becker et al, 2005;Becker et al, 2008;Halliwell & Diedrichs, 2014;Matusek et al, 2004;Mitchell et al, 2007;Stice et al, 2008;Stice et al, 2006). Similar effects were seen in a more ecologically valid context (existing college counselors recruited participants and delivered the intervention to at-risk young women), with long-term eating disorder symptom reductions (Stice et al, 2011(Stice et al, , 2013.…”

“…Many include small, self-selecting samples that overrepresent women and students pursuing health-related degrees, raising questions about generalizability (Hood et al, 2021;Regehr et al, 2013;Wasson et al, 2016;Young et al, 2020;Yusufov et al, 2018). For instance, a pre-post assessment of a mandatory two-credit, active learning, and general education course "Health in Modern Society" revealed a statistically significant increase in students' mental health knowledge and a nonstatistically significant increase in mental health wellness behaviors (Becker et al, 2008). A mandatory Health Enhancement Course (eight lectures + six 2-h tutorials focused on the link between mental and physical health, behavior change strategies, mindfulness-based therapies, and more) delivered to first-year medical students led to pre-to-post improvements in quality of life, depression symptoms, and global mental health (Hassed et al, 2009).…”