Mental Health Screening Before and After the 2020 COVID-19 Closures of US College Campuses: A Cross-Sectional Comparison Using Natural Language Processing
James Aluri, Susanna Lewis, Ashley M. Witmer, Carlos Aguirre, Zoena Howland, Lida King, Susan Han, Mark Dredze, Holly C. WilcoxObjectives:
Mental health screening platforms can be used to identify students in mental distress and can connect students to mental health services during disruptive events such as campus closures. We examined college students’ utilization of a mental health screening platform in the year before and after COVID-19–related campus closures.
Methods:
We analyzed 12 239 students across 31 US institutions who used the Interactive Screening Platform (ISP) in the 1 year before and after the COVID-19–related campus closure on March 15, 2020. We analyzed 3 outcomes: the monthly number of participants at each college, the proportion of participants who entered a dialogue with a mental health counselor, and the proportion of participants who sought a referral through the platform. To determine whether students sought a referral to mental health services, we used natural language processing methods to analyze messages between students and counselors. We used 2-sample
Results:
We found no significant differences in the mean number of participants before and after March 15, 2020 (14.4 vs 16.0 participants per month, respectively), the proportion of participants who participated in a dialogue with a counselor (22.9% [1327 of 5806] vs 23.3% [1501 of 6433]), or the proportion of participants who sought a referral (11.2% [649 of 5806] vs 10.9% [698 of 6433]).
Conclusions:
Student use of the ISP was sustained after the COVID-19–related campus closures, suggesting that the ISP can continue to engage with students during disruptions to campus life. The ISP is a tool that campus leaders can consider using during future disruptive events.