Poor adolescent mental health has been found to predict educational achievement at school and educational and occupational attainment in adulthood [
5-
9].This is of concern for the tertiary environment as over a quarter of young Australian adults aged 18 to 35 attend higher education [
10] and increased levels of psychological distress may impair students’ academic capabilities in the university setting [
11]. For example, a survey of US and Canadian college students (n = 71,860), found seven of the top ten health-related barriers to successful academic performance were related to mental health. In particular, stress was identified as the biggest barrier, affecting around a third of the students (33.9%); a diagnosis of either depression, anxiety disorder, or seasonal affective disorder was the 6th barrier (affecting 16.1% of students); and alcohol misuse was the tenth barrier (affecting 7.8% of students) [
12]. Some studies indicate that mental health problems may be higher among university students compared to their non-tertiary student peers [
13-
18]. For example, a survey of two Australian universities found that most students (83.9%) reported higher levels of psychological distress when compared to the general population (29%) [
11]. Further, students may not seek help for their mental health problems [
14,
19]. Reasons for this may include suicidal thoughts, perceived need for self-reliance, perceived stigma of talking to professionals, believing that nothing will assist, unfamiliarity or awareness of services or perception that stress is a normal part of study [
20-
22]. Financial strain and lower socio-economic status, or being a young or a female student may lead to higher levels of psychological distress, increasing the risk for poorer mental health [
11,
13,
15,
19,
23-
27]. This is significant as the Australian government aims for more, young, and socioeconomically disadvantaged people to complete a university qualification [
28].