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Depression in university students is known to commonly co-occur with other mental disorders, especially anxiety. It is, however, not known how this comorbidity affects the psychopathology of depression in university students. Compared to commonly used methods, the clinical network approach provides a better framework for understanding comorbidity. Accordingly, regularized partial correlation network models were used in this study to (1) examine the severity structure of individual depressive symptoms by the level of comorbid anxiety, and (2) explore the gender differences among these symptoms in university students (N = 919; M age = 21 years., SD = 2.99; 72% = Female). Anhedonia, hopelessness, worthlessness, self-blame, and loneliness were the most central symptoms of depression in this study. The Network Comparison Test revealed no statistically significant global structure and strength of the depressive symptom network by comorbid anxiety level and gender. Implications of the results and network framework with regard to developing alternative treatment options, and the optimization of clinical care and assessment of depression are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prevalence and sociodemographic correlates of common mental disorders among first-year university students in post-apartheid South Africa: Implications for a public mental health approach to student wellness. This is perhaps partly because university students are mostly used as analogue samples to study mental health in the general population - with few studies focusing on university student-specific mental health. The mental health of university students is considered among the most pressing public health areas in South Africa. [Extracted from the article]

This study examined the measurement invariance of scores from the BDI-II as well as the differences in latent mean scores by gender. Participants were 919 South African university students (females = 72%). They completed the BDI-II, which is a measure of Negative Attitude (NA), Performance Difficulty (PD), Somatic Complaints (S) and Depression (D). The data were analysed utilising multigroup confirmatory factor analyses (MCFA). Evidence of factorial invariance was established at the level of configural, metric and scalar invariance, across gender groups. Females scored significantly higher latent means on measures of NA and S compared to males. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]