Profiles of mental illness in college students and associated factors: A latent class analysis

Mental illness among university students poses a pressing challenge for educational institutions, urging the need for strategies that foster health and mitigate mental distress, with an emphasis on preventing suicide. Our study sought to discern the profiles of mental illness among college students and explore the factors associated with them. We examined data from 918 students at a Brazilian Federal Institute, utilizing Latent Class Analysis and multinomial regression for our analyses. We identified three distinct mental illness profiles: Anxiety with Low Suicide Risk; Mental Illness with Moderate Suicide Risk; and Mental Illness with High Suicide Risk. We observed a reduced association of these profiles with religious beliefs. Conversely, there was a heightened association with cisgender women, individuals identifying as LGBTQI+, those with learning disabilities, and victims of sexual violence. Our findings underscore the importance of tailored prevention and health promotion programs to enhance student well-being. There's a compelling need to devise mental health strategies tailored to the specific needs of the identified groups, particularly students from the LGBTQI + community, survivors of sexual abuse, and those grappling with learning disabilities. •Distinct classes had variable levels of mental illness.•Anxiety was high in all profiles, especially in the most severe profiles.•Profiles of mental illness was related to gender, sexual abuse and learning disabilities.