Prevalence estimates of depression and anxiety disorders among Icelandic University students when taking functional impairment into account

Abstract The aim of this study was to test whether adding assessment of functional impairment to symptoms of specific mental disorders would have any effect on estimated prevalence of mental disorders in a non-clinical sample of university students in Iceland. A self-report measure was designed to assess the subjective functional impairment of anxiety, depression and stress in students’ everyday life. Measures were administered on paper to 671 participants. We hypothesized that taking functional impairment into account would yield lower prevalence rates than using only specific symptoms measures. The results suggests that the addition of functional impairment measure lends a context to the results of the symptom-specific measures and can provide a more accurate estimation of mental health problems of university students than symptoms self-report measures alone.