Carol Vidal

Thank you for inviting me.

I'm excited to be here.

So I wasn't super surprised because we know from several sociologists and researchers that there has been an increase in the rate of depression and suicidal thoughts and behaviors for like two decades.

And that increase actually, it was a steeper increase in 2012, which is what

researchers like Jean Quinty, who studies generation differences and stuff, have found.

I guess I was a little surprised that we saw more of the difference starting in 2016, but wasn't very surprised about seeing these trends in increasing rates.

Well, this data is actually publicly accessible, so you can request it.

And it's Healthy Minds study data, which is a questionnaire that they ask students every year in college.

So there's over 400 colleges that distribute this questionnaire, and then all college students respond to it.

So we just looked at the data, studying the data that we had available, and then we

put it all together and then looked at trends over time.

These are not the same students, so the survey is administered every year, so it's not like it's administered to the same students year after year.

It's just whatever sample that year you have, you ask them to respond to the questionnaire.

And we thought about looking at it just because we thought it'd be interesting to see college students' depression rates and how they've changed.

And the PAQ-9 is the questionnaire that they ask.

It's a pretty commonly administered questionnaire for screening for depression.

And it asks all the symptoms of depression that the DSM uses to categorize and describe someone with depression.

Symptoms like, for example, anhedonia, which is not enjoying the things that you usually do, low mood, which are the main core symptoms of depression.

And then other symptoms like sleep problems, appetite problems.

and to tell them behaviors and set.