A Psychometric Study of Academic Difficulty and Psychiatric Illness in Students

There is a growing body of evidence which points to a high prevalence of psychiatric disorder in students and to the contribution of such disturbance to wastage and under-achievement. The relationship between psychiatric illness and academic difficulty is, however, a complex one, for severely ill individuals may be capable of high achievement while apparently mildly disturbed students may fail academically through the operation of emotional factors. The ability to predict or detect at an early stage the psychiatrically or academically vulnerable student would clearly be of great value.