CORE-OM mental health norms of students attending university counselling services benchmarked against an age-matched primary care sample

Whilst concern has been expressed at the increasing severity of the mental health of students, there has been very little research on this growing population outside of small, single institution studies. The aims of this paper are to provide CORE Outcome Measure (CORE-OM) norms for the psychological health of students across multiple sites receiving university counselling, and benchmark these against an age-matched sample of people receiving treatment in NHS primary care settings. Results indicate that students using university counselling services show severity levels only marginally lower than young people presenting in primary care, with the differences being at a functional/relationship rather than a symptomatic level and with levels of risk to self being similar. This suggests that university counselling services deliver a service to people who closely resemble NHS primary care clients in terms of severity and risk to self.