Background: The burden and severity of student mental health continue to increase in parallel with increasing financial pressures on students and services alike. There is a need for a student-specific measure of distress that acknowledges their unique context. This study examined the feasibility, acceptance, and initial psychometric properties of a US measure, the Counseling Center Assessment of Psychological Symptoms (CCAPS), in a UK student sample.
Methods: A sample of 294 UK help-seeking students from two universities completed the CCAPS-62 and Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation (CORE-10) as a comparator. The factor solution and reliability of the CCAPS-62 were examined. Correlations and clinical boundaries were determined between the CCAPS-62 subscales and CORE-10, and comparisons were made with US published norms.
Results: The CCAPS-62 demonstrated a strong factor solution that matched the intended subscales. All subscales had good reliability and correlated significantly with the CORE-10. The agreement on caseness between the two measures was 92.8% with 86.3% reaching clinical threshold on both the CCAPS-62 and CORE-10. Severity was most noticeable for academic distress, depression, anxiety, and social anxiety. Compared to US data, UK students showed higher clinical severity for all psychological symptoms.
Conclusions: The CCAPS-62 is a reliable and psychometrically valid assessment measure to use with UK students without revision. The overall distress indicated is similar to that of the CORE-10, but the individual subscales are more informative of specific student concerns including academic distress, social anxiety, and substance abuse. Potential benefits of administering a student-focused assessment measure in student counselling services are discussed.
Key practitioner message: University students attending counselling in the UK demonstrate clinical severity for academic distress, depression, anxiety, and social anxiety. Compared to university students in the US, UK students present with higher clinical severity on all contextual measures of student psychological distress. It is advantageous for university counselling services to administer a student-specific clinical measure over measures intended for the general clinical population. CCAPS-62 is an acceptable, feasible, and psychometrically valid measure of student psychological distress that can be used in the UK without revision. It is important for university counselling services to continue to provide support from therapists that are trained and experienced in the university context over services intended for the general clinical population.
Keywords: academic distress; anxiety; assessment; counselling; depression; feasibility.
Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.