Abstract
A survey of mental health problems of university students was carried out on 1850 participants in the age
range 19-26 years. An indigenous Student Problem Checklist (SPCL) developed by Mahmood & Saleem,
(2011), 45 items is a rating scale, designed to determine the prevalence rate of mental health problem
among university students. This scale relates to four dimensions of mental health problems as reported by
university students, such as: Sense of Being Dysfunctional, Loss of Confidence, Lack of self Regulation and
Anxiety Proneness. For interpretation of the overall SPCL score, the authors suggest that scores falling above
one SD should be considered as indicative of severe problems, where as score about 2 SD represent very
severe problems. Our finding show that 31% of the participants fall in the “severe” category, whereas 16%
fall in the “very severe” category. As far as the individual dimensions are concerned, 17% respondents
comprising sample of the present study fall in very severe category Sense of Being Dysfunctional, followed
by Loss of Confidence (16%), Lack of Self Regulation (14%) and Anxiety Proneness (12%). These findings are
in lying with similar other studies on mental health of students. The role of variables like sample
characteristics, the measure used, cultural and contextual factors are discussed in determining rates as well
as their implications for student counseling service in prevention and intervention.
