The Price of Persistence: Investigating the Impact of Pursuing Engineering on Undergraduate Student Mental Health

This work in progress research paper presents an investigation of mental health statuses of undergraduate engineering students. The American Psychological Association (APA) recognizes stress, anxiety and depression to be foundational elements of more severe mental health problems and among notable public health concerns for institutes of higher education. Additionally, underrepresentation alone has been shown to have a negative impact on mental health, with recent studies linking impostorism to higher psychological distress and lower self-esteem across a sample of multiethnic undergraduates. This pilot study seeks to gain an understanding of the cost of persistence in engineering through the lens of students' self-reported measures of anxiety and depression. Preliminary results reveal a prevalence of clinically significant mental health conditions among diverse engineering undergraduates, which suggests the need for further investigation.