Survey of Nearly 100,000 U.S. College Students Links AI Health Use to Higher Anxiety and Depression Screening Rates

A study published in the Journal of Counseling & Development analyzed 96,205 U.S. college students from the 2023-2024 Healthy Minds Study, of whom 3,131 had used generative AI for health-related matters. About 52% of those users screened positive for anxiety versus roughly 43% of non-users, and about 47% versus 38% for depression, with the link persisting after accounting for age, sex, race and ethnicity, financial stress, and past diagnoses. The cross-sectional survey cannot determine whether AI use worsens distress or whether already distressed students turn to AI first.

The survey offers a verifiable signal for campus mental health services and AI literacy education: although AI health queries were reported by a small share of students, those users were more likely to screen positive for anxiety and depression, and the link remained after accounting for past diagnoses. Because it is a single cross-sectional survey, it cannot establish causal direction or show that AI use raises or lowers mental health. For schools, a practical step is to bring AI use into counseling conversations and teach students to question AI-generated health information; for AI education product teams, follow-up behavior and credibility cues in health-related answers merit design attention. College counselors may need to add questions about how students use AI for health and help them distinguish information seeking from repeated questioning. Campus AI literacy education may expand into health information discernment, requiring students to question plausible but incorrect AI answers.