Date of Award

2025

Document Type

Thesis

Department

Psychology & Gerontology

First Advisor

Alvin David Farmer Jr.

Second Advisor

Naida Silverthorn

Third Advisor

Brooke Johnson

Abstract

First-generation college students (FGCSs) are students whose parents did not graduate with a four-year college degree (Redford et al., 2017). Compared to continuing-generation students (CGSs), most prior research finds that FGCSs report similar levels of depression and anxiety, and similar or even less severe alcohol use despite often feeling higher stress (Muñoz, 2023; Rockwell & Kimmel, 2023). Resilience and flourishing are two psychological individual factors that describe an ability to adapt to stress and feel meaning in life, which both tend to correlate with increased mental health and lowered substance use (Keyes et al., 2010; Parker et al., 2018). Thus, the present study hypothesized that FGCSs would report higher resilience and flourishing and that the positive effects of these variables would be more pronounced in FGCSs than in CGSs. This was investigated through secondary data analysis of the 2024-25 Healthy Minds Study, a nationally representative sample of 84,736 college students. Results were mixed: FGCSs reported lower levels of harmful alcohol use than CGSs, but also higher depression, higher anxiety, lower resilience, and lower flourishing. However, these differences were small in magnitude. Additionally, resilience and flourishing strongly predicted lower depression and anxiety across the full sample, but these associations were not indeed stronger for FGCSs than CGSs. These findings suggest that other contextual or individual factors may better explain mental health among FGCSs. Further, these findings highlight the importance of cultivating resilience and flourishing in higher education, as their benefits to mental health seemingly transcend college generations.

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