A new survey of freshmen entering college shows the young students' mental and emotional health to be near an all-time low.

According to Inside Higher Ed, the Annual Freshman Survey (AFS) released its 50th annual report recently. The report complied responses from some 153,000 incoming freshmen taking classes full time at 227 four-year institutions in the fall 2014 semester.

50.7 percent of respondents rated their emotional health "in the highest 10 percent" or even as "above average." It is the lowest total since 1985, the first year the AFS asked its respondents to rate their own emotional health.

A nonprofit geared toward preventing student suicide and improve mental health, the Jed Foundation partnered with the Clinton Foundation to launch the Campus Program. Several studies and surveys have pointed to increased pressure from exams and course work leading to declining mental health for students. What's more is the pressure to perform in the classroom may also be driving students to abuse certain drugs and lose sleep in order to study harder.

"Students who come to college feeling depressed and not emotionally well tend not to graduate," Kevin Eagan, director of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at the University of California at Los Angeles, the report's publisher, told Inside Higher Ed. "They're much more likely to leave an institution, and that should be worrying."

Nearly 10 percent of this year's AFS respondents said they were "frequently depressed," which is the highest total since 1988. It also represents a sharp increase since 2009, when the survey had its lowest rate of students who felt "frequently depressed," at 3.4 percent.

Respondents with mental disabilities like autism spectrum or with Asperger's syndrome reported being frequently depressed 22 percent of the time, while 17 percent of students with physical disabilities answered similarly.

"We certainly know that all these groups are at higher risk for emotional distress and for having troubles socially and physically," Victor Schwartz, medical director at the Jed Foundation, told Inside Higher Ed. "All of these things increase the challenge of functioning in high school and college settings. They have to work harder; they're struggling to make friends. Schools really need to be aware as to how and if students with special needs are getting the support they need."