Objectives

University students have a high prevalence of mental health problems and disorders, and the COVID-19 pandemic has further disrupted their day-to-day life. University students have been reported to have high rates of baseline suicidal ideation. Our objective was to examine how suicidality has changed in students across one year of the COVID-19 pandemic and to identify risk factors during this period.

Methods

We utilized weekly cross-sectional data from the Canadian World Mental Health International College Student survey (N = 4693) to analyze trends in suicidality during the pandemic. This was done by plotting both the 30-day suicide ideation using generalized additive model (GAM), with a cubic spline (best model) and adjusting for demographics. We also ran an analysis on the association between binary 30-day ideation and different sample characteristics using logistic regression.

Results

Beginning in February 2020, ideation levels were relatively high with a downwards trend through June to September before gradually increasing. Changes in suicidality seem to accompany the academic calendar and seasonal trends, rather than Covid-related phases. We will present risk factors associated with suicidal ideation, most notably ethnicity, previous mental problems and disorders, and ability to access support services.

Conclusions

Preliminary results from these analyses indicate that, in general, students have remained relatively resilient under the stress factors presented by the pandemic, however certain subpopulations appear to be more affected than others.

on behalf of the WHO-World Mental Health Surveys Initiative/International College Student Surveys