These Are the Most Depressed College Students by Major

Medical students are experiencing some of the highest rates of depression compared to all other majors.
Many people remember their college days with fond memories as they underwent classes to become knowledgeable in the fields they ended up working in. However, for others, college can bring along worsened mental health issues, including depression and anxiety.
A new study from higher education research group Degreechoices found that medical students saw the highest rates of increasing depression from 2019 to 2024 at a whopping 35.3 percent.
The next most depressed major was law, where the percentage of students experiencing depression was 29.9 percent in 2024.
Nursing students also saw significant rates of depression, with 38.3 percent in 2024, marking a 9.3 percent uptick since 2019.
The full list of fields with the highest increase in the depression rate was as follows: medicine, law, social work, engineering, business, nursing, pre-professional, natural science or mathematics, humanities and social sciences.
All majors saw upticks in depression rates from 4.6 to 35.3 percent from 2019 to 2024.
Work and school stress may be contributing to the mental health issues experienced by students, with some fields more likely to bring more intense expectations and higher workloads.
The study looked at data from the Healthy Minds Network on the percentage of students diagnosed with depression in different fields of study from 2019 to 2024.
“University is a necessary step in the life of many, but this does not mean that studying is a walk in the park for everyone,” a spokesperson for Degreechoices told Newsweek.
“This data shows how all sorts of fields of study can be daunting and cause emotional strain, with financial stress being a common factor throughout them all. Moreover, it highlights how the past few years, particularly post-pandemic, have taken a heavy toll on certain fields, with medicine and nursing ranking among the top ten.”
Research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2016 showed that roughly 27 percent of medical students in 47 countries reported suffering from depression or depression symptoms during medical school.
But even beyond just students in medicine, the share of college students facing depression surged from 21 percent in 2014 to more than 40 percent in 2023, according to the Healthy Minds Network.
This can have dire effects both on students’ health and their studies, as those who are dealing with depression were found to be twice as likely to leave college before graduation, says U.S. News & World Report.
A 2022 study in the National Health Statistics Reports found that one in five adults said they had experienced symptoms of anxiety or depression.