It's no wonder that college students are stressed beyond belief. They are staying up later and working harder to balance multiple jobs and extracurricular clubs, all while trying to maintain a social life, spend time with family, and still have fun. On top of this, students must find time to study and get good grades, and are told that their hard work will bring them one step closer to their dream job or dream career. One simply cannot just do it all, all the time.
College is one of the great opportunities to express yourself. It's an opportunity to find out who you are and who you want to be. Higher education allows you to dig deeper into your soul to find out what your life calling is, build relationships with your future colleagues and plan how you'll change the world one day. Just one life in a world of 7 billion bodies, we often are the ones to put the most amount of responsibility and anxiety on ourselves. Very little do we take the time to congratulate ourselves on a "job well done", but instead we view the "job that could have been done better" and always the "job that is next to be done." We as students are tired, and we keep pushing our bodies to the limit each and every day to live out our passions and live out our true potential with mounting stress.
What Are The Statistics on Mental Health?
It is estimated that 1 in 4 adults struggle with mental illness in a given year. In a report conducted by the National Institute on Mental Illness, of the 61.5 million Americans struggle with mental illness, 1 in 17 will struggle with a serious mental illness (i.e. major depression, schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder). In total, the National Institute on Mental Illness estimates this to be approximately 13.6 million Americans. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration also highlights that about 60 percent of adults and one-half of youths, from ages 8 - 15 years old, have not received mental health services in the past year. Specially talking about access, African-Americans and Hispanic Americans are recorded to utilize mental health services at a rate one-half of the rate of whites in the past year. Asian-Americans are recorded to use those services at one-third of the rate. Given such statistics and new research that has been newly made available, mental health awareness has been making headlines.
Mental Health & The College Campus
The American Psychological Association consistently ranks depression and anxiety as the most commonly occurring mental disorders in college students treated by college psychological counseling centers. It is also reported that out of those who are struggling with mental illness, 40% will not seek out help, 80% feel overwhelmed in their daily life obligations and responsibilities, and 50% have had anxiety that caused them to struggle through school. Colleges and Universities across the country have been responding to student concerns about the lack of resources available to them on campus with much positive improvement for expanded access and better care for students. While there has been a lot of progress, horror stories have emerged of colleges kicking out students for perceived or "campus-diagnosed" mental illnesses, barring them from campus, or even going so far as to detain them in a psych ward with no means of communication with their parents or friends for weeks.
Looking to the Future
Change is very much needed, and students should be provided the transparency and guidance needed to know what their rights are as students on campus. The Jed Foundation, a national non-profit suicide-prevention organization, even did an independent review of national universities and composed a list of the first 30 colleges that receive a mental health resources 'seal of approval'. This list includes student benefits, including "access to the gym, free counseling and physical health services, crisis programs, restricted access to hazardous or illegal materials and early identification of students with problems" … the list goes on and on, as JedCampus reports. Colleges have started to make strides to invest more money and university resources into treating mental illness: as seen in hosting various workshops, information sessions and open houses on their psychological counseling centers, and reassuring students that they have their best interests.
This is clearly a step forward, but we need to have a general conversation about mental illness and what it means for students.
Let's bring our care into the 21st century, by hosting workshops online and giving students the ability to learn about how their brain works.
