Mental health issues linked to high college dropout rate

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MANILA, Philippines — Mental health issues are among the major reasons why college students drop out of school, according to Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) Chairman Prospero de Vera III. 

De Vera revealed this during the Senate subcommittee on finance’s Tuesday hearing after Senator Joel Villanueva raised issues concerning the high attrition rate among college students.

De Vera said financial difficulty, which covers transportation costs, clothing, food, and internet, family problems, relocation, mental health; and academic difficulty are the main reasons behind the dropout rate.

“Emerging reason is a mental health concern that we did not expect previously, while academic difficulty placed only fifth. Mental health concern is a higher reason for stopping [compared to] academic difficulty. They are having difficulty studying, but their mental health has really been affected,” de Vera said. 

“Looking at the data, an alarming number of college students dropped out of college for example, batch 2021 registered a 40.6 percent attrition rate while batch 2022 registered a 39.3 percent attrition rate,” Villanueva said.

“It appears now that at least four out of 10 students in higher education either temporarily or permanently left school last academic year 2022 to 2023. Of 17 regions, BARMM posted the highest attrition rate at 93.4 percent,” Villanueva added. 

De Vera said CHEd already has two projects on mental health.

“We are working with Miriam College to roll out training of guidance counselors in schools and also the support staff on how to identify mental health concerns; we have a project with UNILAB because they have a toolkit already on mental health, which we are rolling out to the schools,” he said.