One out of every four students who visits a university health centre for a routine medical problem has the signs of depression, according to researchers who say an opportunity is being missed to spot these students.

The study looked at more than 1,600 college students at the University of British Columbia, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of Washington.

All of them had visited a campus medical clinic and agreed to answer to fill out a survey that asked about their mood and their outlook for the future. They were also quizzed about they alcohol and tobacco use, as well as unwanted sexual encounters and violence.

The researchers found that 25 per cent of the men and 26 per cent of the women had the signs of depression. Many of them were depressed enough that they reported that they had considered suicide.

The authors note that depression can be a serious illness and that depressed students need treatment, which might include counselling but could also include medication.

Yet, doctors at campus medical clinics are not catching many of these students because there's currently no way to screen students for depression.

Dr. Michael Fleming, a professor of family and community medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine who led the study, says depression screening is simple.

While waiting for an appointment at the health centre, the student could answer seven simple questions and their answers could be immediately entered into his or her electronic health record.

Then, when the doctor or nurse sees the student, he or she could ask further about the student's depression and assess whether further action were needed.

"Depression screening is easy to do, we know it works, and it can save lives," Fleming said in a statement. "It should be done for every student who walks into a health centre."

He says students whose depression is missed are more likely to drop out of school, engage in risky behaviour or even commit suicide.

"Things continually happen to students -- a low grade or problems with a boyfriend or girlfriend -- that can trigger depression," Fleming said. "If you don't take the opportunity to screen at every visit, you are going to miss these kids."

Universities typically separate mental health treatment from primary care treatment. If students come to a campus health center and complain about depression, they are referred to a counselling centre.

"But students don't necessarily get there unless they are pretty depressed," Fleming said. "If we screen, we can try to find every student that is depressed."

Dr. Stan Kutcher, an adolescent psychiatrist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, cautioned against reading too much into the study. He noted that the survey could determine only if the students had the signs of depression, not full clinical depression.

He notes that just because some of the students reported sleep disturbances, lack of interest, feelings of guilt or any of the other nine common symptoms of depression doesn't mean that any of them could be classified as clinically depressed.

"If you didn't have symptoms of depression sometime in the last week, there's something wrong with you. You're brain-dead," he told CTV.

The study appears in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry.