Leaving home and moving away to university is hard. There are all sorts of stressors that impact first year students including learning to live independently, making new friends, managing finances and working out what is required of being a university student. Many experience home sickness and a period of adjustment. During this vulnerable time, the coping patterns young people develop can determine how they will respond to crises across their life span.

What young people learn about how to support their mental well-being and what to do when times are tough is therefore very important. Tertiary education providers (including universities) have a duty of care to support and respond to the needs of their students. Providers have thought carefully about how to provide support, including offering pastoral care programmes, peer support networks, counselling, and well-being programmes.

In Aotearoa New Zealand there is the code for pastoral care approaches within halls of residences (the Education (Pastoral Care of Tertiary and International Learners) Code of Practice 2021). Yet providers encounter continuous mental health struggles amongst students. As educators and researchers, we therefore continue to seek answers about how we can better understand and support the mental health and well-being of our students.

Many young people are reluctant to engage with professional supports when they are stressed instead preferring to engage with informal sources such as friends and family (Pfeiffer & In-Albon, 2022).  But why is it that some student groups are more reluctant to access support services than others, and only accept help when they reach a crisis point? What is our role as tertiary education providers in supporting these students? In trying to answer these questions, the authors discovered one factor for student reluctance to engage with support services: optimism bias.

Not all groups of students are the same. For example, agricultural students are unique having grown up in rural communities where the dominant paradigm of “she’ll be right” prevails. A good farmer is characterised by being resilient and resourceful, pushing on through hard times. With suicide rates in rural communities higher compared to the general population, these messages are concerning. They generate and perpetuate stigma around mental illness, creating a barrier to help seeking. This is observed in agricultural students being underrepresented in groups accessing university based mental health services. Our experience tells us that many agricultural students understand the importance of talking about mental health and aren’t afraid to help others. Yet, they remain stoically reluctant to reach out and seek help for themselves. 

What is an optimism bias?

Being optimistic and looking on the bright side are generally thought of as being good things. By being optimistic, people focus on the positives fostering their mental health and physical well-being as well as supporting positive decision-making. Having an optimism bias refers to a positivity or self-serving bias where individuals believe good things are more likely to happen to themselves than others and bad things are less likely to happen.  This view can be both good and bad. For instance, holding an optimistic view can be a protective mechanism in certain contexts, creating feelings of invulnerability which reduces fear and anxiety. Conversely, optimism bias can have negative consequences with individuals more likely to take risks and ignore or underestimate potential threats.

Why is the optimism bias a problem?

Optimism bias is a problem when students hold on to fixed beliefs that stressful situations will resolve themselves or that they are able to resolve their own problems, without needing to reach out to others. With students believing that bad things won’t happen to them, they don’t feel the need to engage in self-protective behaviours, they delay help seeking and don’t engage with health promotion messages. Their optimistic outlook also means they may minimise the impact of stressful events. This self-reliance may reflect a desire for autonomy, especially as a student tries to prove they can make it on their own. When encountered alongside other messages which stigmatise help seeking (such as those prevalent in rural communities), an optimism bias will reduce engagement, resulting in delays to seeking and receiving help and a reluctance to engage with health promotion messages. This means the optimism bias places an already vulnerable population at more risk of becoming overwhelmed and experiencing mental distress.

What can we do about the optimism bias?

By educators having an awareness of optimism bias and the impact this may have on groups of students they can take steps to mitigate the bias and tailor health promotion messages and services to temper the effect. Peer delivery of mental health messages has been shown to be particularly effective in ameliorating the impacts of optimism bias, as students are more likely to listen to messages from people like themselves. It should include messages and examples of people like themselves keeping themselves well and accessing help when needed.

The authors are all educators and researchers at tertiary institutions. Following the discovery of a potential optimism bias amongst agricultural students we have done further testing which confirmed its existence. We adjusted our well-being education focus to involve a strong focus on peer delivery. Our message to other educators is to recognise that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t always meet the needs of all students when it comes to supporting their health and well-being. It is important to understand the needs of different cohorts and to talk to them about what works and then tailor health messages and services accordingly.

Blog contributors:

• Dr Nicky Stanley-Clarke
• Dr Jorie Knook
• Amanda Hay
• Robbie Maris

Link/reference to full article:

The link is: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07294360.2024.2339838

Full citation: Stanley-Clarke, N., Hay, A., Maris, R., Ryan, A., Knook, J., & Winder, L. (2024). Optimism bias as a barrier to accessing mental health support amongst tertiary students. Higher Education Research & Development, 43(7), 1602–1614. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2024.2339838

References to the literature.

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