Adjustment to university by students in Canada, Spain, and Ecuador: distress and identity issues
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A crisis in mental health is seen in the escalation of psychological difficulties among university students at a time in their life when they are experiencing increased challenges dealing with identity concerns. In this study, we examined the alignment of psychiatric symptoms with developmental psychopathology to clarify associations between these diverse approaches to students’ mental health. The focus is on the severity of psychiatric symptoms in conjunction with students categorized in terms of identity distress. Identity distress refers to the experience of extreme uncertainty and dysfunction related to personal identity issues that are critical during the lifespan. The Counseling Center Assessment of Psychological Symptoms (CCAPS-34) was used to assess clinical diagnoses, while the Identity Distress Scale measured upset and uncertainty related to identity issues. The outcome measure evaluated scholastic, interpersonal, and affective functioning at university. Participants included 1,704 students from Canada, Spain, and Ecuador (with a median age of 19 years). Taken together, 20.8% of the sample was classified with identity distress, 36% with moderate to severe psychological problems, and 64% were classified as flourishing, meaning that they experienced neither psychological symptoms nor serious identity difficulties. Despite differences between the countries, the predicted alignment of psychological symptom severity in relation to identity distress was supported and associated with students’ adjustment to university. The findings underscore the importance of addressing identity disturbances in conjunction with clinical diagnosis to meet the functional mental health needs of university students. The need for culturally sensitive interventions and research is emphasized.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".