There is no comprehensive study on the mental health of Sri Lankan undergraduate in higher education as most existing studies have been done for medical students only. It is unknown how academic and environmental factors contribute for the prevalence of psychiatric illnesses. Further, there is no sufficient information on the student/university based remedies to reduce the psychological distress of students. This research is carried out to find the overall psychological distress, well-being, prevalence percentages of psychiatric illnesses, associated risk factors and student/university remedies to overcome them. All 13 psychiatric illnesses were found with a moderate correlation among diseases having a mean prevalence percentage of 25.92 and standard deviation of 12.93 despite the prevalence of well-being factors among students and only 8 % are clinically diagnosed. 89 % of the students were suffering from at least one psychiatric illness and 68 % were found to be psychologically distressed. Sets of overall and individual demographic, academic and environmental risk factors contributing for the prevalence of a psychiatric illness in general and in particularly were identified respectively after a Binary logistic regression analysis. 61 % of the students don’t receive psychiatric help from the university and are using their own remedies.