We already know that student loan debt, which topped $1.1 trillion in 2014, has had and will continue to have lasting impacts on the millennial generation. Multiple studies have shown that this debt situation and the resulting financial precariousness leads to later home buying, putting off marriage, as well as leaving almost an entire generation without savings.
Now a new study says that it might also be impacting mental health.
Researchers at the University of South Carolina and the University of California, Los Angeles just led the first nationally representative study to specifically look at the effects of student loans on health, according to a news release.
They focused on the relationship between the amount of debt that students accrue during undergraduate studies and their mental well-being post-grad, as well as on annual borrowing and the mental well-being of current students.
“We are speculating that part of the reason that these types of loans are so stressful is the fact that you cannot defer them, they follow you for the rest of your life until you pay them off,” the study’s lead author Katrina Walsemann said in a release.
The study found that those who had higher amounts of debt incurred from student loans reported higher levels of depressive symptoms and poorer psychological functioning, even when adjusted for other factors that might impact mental health.
“We speculate that the American middle class is suffering the most from post-graduation debt, since they do not qualify for governmental assistance, nor is their family able to take on the bulk of the costs associated with college,” Walsemann said.
Walsemann hopes to continue her research and see if the “spillover effects” from student loan debt continue to impact health for many years to come and how that mental health plays out in other life decisions.
