%0 Journal Article
%@ 1470-2738
%A McCloud, T
%A Bann, D
%D 2019
%F discovery:10080294
%J Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health
%T Financial stress and mental health among higher education students in the UK up to 2018: rapid review of evidence
%U https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10080294/
%X Introduction In the United Kingdom and many other  countries, debt accrued during higher education has  increased substantially in recent decades. The prevalence  of common mental health problems has also increased  alongside these changes. However, it is as yet unclear  whether there is an association between financial stress  and mental health among higher education students.  Methods We conducted a rapid review of the peerreviewed scientific literature. Eligible studies were  English-language publications testing the association  between any indicator of financial stress and mental  health among higher education students in the UK.  Papers were located through a systematic search of  PsychINFO, PubMed and Embase up to November 2018.  Results The search strategy yielded 1272 studies—9  met the inclusion criteria. A further two were identified  through hand-searching. The median sample size was  408. Only three of seven studies found an association  between higher debt and worse mental health.  There was a consistent cross-sectional relationship  between worse mental health and both experience of  financial difficulties (seven of seven studies) and debt  worry/financial concern (four of five studies), though  longitudinal evidence was mixed and limited to six  studies.  Conclusion Among higher education students in  the UK, there is little evidence that the amount of  debt is associated with mental health. However, more  subjective measures of increased financial stress were  more consistently associated with worse mental health  outcomes. Nevertheless, the identified evidence was  judged to be weak; further research is required to  examine whether links between financial stress and  mental health outcomes are robust and causal in nature.
%Z This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.