Addressing Basic Needs Among Black and African-American College Students: The Role of Mental Health, Food Insecurity, and Experiences with Homelessness

Background and Purpose: Limited financial resources to support basic needs such as access to housing and food among college students leads to a physical, psychological, and academic decline for this population as they move through their educational experience. There is limited knowledge on the impact of such experiences on African-American and Black college students who report generally more stressors around managing mental health needs, which results in bigger declines in overall self-rated health and academic outcomes. The study aims to investigate risk factors among Black and African-American college students in experiences with food and housing insecurity as it relates to self-reported personal presenting problems. It is hypothesized that Black and African-American students will report increased degree of personal problems when housing and food insecurity are high.

Methods: Data was used from the Phase 2 of the Study of Basic Needs for the California State University system where surveys were disseminated to 23 California State University campuses to understand experiences with housing and food insecurity among students. Descriptive and regression analysis was done to determine correlates predictive of rate of presenting problems (concern for personal relationships and well-being), within the personal domain of the Presenting Problem Scale among Black and African-American undergraduate and graduate level students (n=1028).

Results: Findings reveal a significant model with 42.8% of the variance in the model explained (R² = .428). Identifying as male (t= - 3.33, p=.001, β= -.080) was negatively associated with level of personal presenting problems. Higher self-reported number of days (prior 30-days) of poor mental health (t= 13.2, p=.000, β=0.394) and inactive days due to poor physical health and mental health (t= 5.60, p=.000, β=0.175) were associated with higher rate of reported presenting problems in the personal domain. Reporting experience with food security (t= 6.89, p=.000, β=0.176) and homelessness (t= 3.78, p=.000, β=0.094) were also predictors of higher reported rate of presenting personal problems by the sample.

Conclusion and Implications: Experiences with food insecurity and homelessness present as risk factors for higher degree of self-reported personal presenting problems among Black and African- American college students. Initiatives within Universities are needed to address unsupported meeting of basic needs for Black and African-American students in order to holistically support student outcomes. Doing so can strengthen existing programs that focus on addressing educational opportunity gaps but leave support for well-being and mental health for this population still in need.