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Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1746-8307
Date Available
5-1-2026
Year of Publication
2026
Document Type
Doctoral Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
College
Engineering
Department/School/Program
Chemical Engineering
Faculty
Sarah A. Wilson
Faculty
Kimberly W. Anderson
Faculty
J Zack. Hilt
Abstract
Engineering education is at a critical juncture where supporting student mental health is essential for fostering persistence, equity, and the development of a resilient and innovative workforce. While engineering students experience high levels of distress and low rates of mental health treatment seeking (known as a mental health treatment gap), there is a gap in knowledge around how this compares to that of students in other fields of study. Further, while efforts have been made to improve the mental health treatment gap in engineering, they are limited by a lack of actionable, theory-based targets. Therefore, this dissertation aims to characterize the factors influencing engineering students’ mental health and treatment use and identify avenues for improvement.
First, guided by Andersen’s Behavioral Model, the mental health and help-seeking behaviors of undergraduate engineering students were compared to those of their peers in other fields of study. Given the key influence of social identity (e.g., gender identity, race/ethnicity) on mental health and treatment seeking, this work accounts for the sociodemographic variation across fields using regression analyses. Results showed that engineering students were among the least likely to report symptoms of depression and/or anxiety, but the 44% of engineering students who did were among the least likely to seek professional help for their mental health. Engineering students were also the least likely to report having received a diagnosis for either condition. Therefore, this work identified a treatment gap in undergraduate engineering students experiencing mental health concerns, which is likely driven in part by the unique aspects of engineering culture.
To better characterize those factors accounting for this gap in treatment, the Undergraduate Engineering Mental Health Help Seeking Instrument (UE-MH-HSI) was then administered to 1,903 engineering undergraduates across five institutions. Correlations and regression were used to examine the links between help-seeking intention and (a) help-seeking mechanisms (e.g., attitude, perceived norm, self-efficacy) and (b) beliefs about seeking help. Students’ personal evaluation of seeking help as a good versus bad thing (attitude) and their perceptions of other’s expectations and behaviors toward seeking help (perceived norm) demonstrated the strongest links with intention to seek help. Agreement with certain beliefs (e.g., seeking help would. . . make me feel better, improve my academic performance) and disagreement with others (e.g., seeking help would be a … waste of time, sign of weakness) was associated with their intention to seek help from a mental health professional. These results provide targets for future interventions designed to improve help seeking in the engineering student population.
The practical implications of these findings are then demonstrated through the development of a series of workshops aimed at improving the mental health and help seeking of engineering students. Using a subset of data collected from students in a First-Year Engineering (FYE) program, beliefs influencing help-seeking intention were identified using Pearson’s correlations. Those key beliefs guided the development of six workshops administered to FYE students over the course of an academic year. Future work will evaluate the effectiveness of these workshops. Overall, the work presented here highlights the unique factors affecting undergraduate engineering students’ mental health and help-seeking behaviors. Personal beliefs influenced by engineering culture limit engineering students’ intention to seek professional mental health help when they need it. These findings offer actionable, theory-driven pathways to promote help-seeking, support student well-being, and ultimately strengthen persistence, equity, and resilience in the engineering workforce.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2026.257
Archival?
Archival
Funding Information
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation, Grant/Award Number: 2225567 from 2022 to 2025
Recommended Citation
Whitwer, Matthew D., "MENTAL HEALTH AND HELP-SEEKING IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION: BELIEFS, NORMS, AND INTERVENTION PATHWAYS FOR UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS" (2026). Theses and Dissertations--Chemical and Materials Engineering. 188.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/cme_etds/188
