When I was going through my struggles with depression, my friends reported me to student life a lot, as they were concerned about me. I constantly got emails or had people show up to my room to take me to the student life office. While I am happy that my friends cared about me enough to want to help, I guarantee you it was not the best way to deal with my problems.
First of all, I got reported enough that I was afraid to talk to my friends about my depression because I knew they would report me, and I didn't want to be reported. Even when I just needed to talk, my friends would report me and I would get an email the next day from student life asking me to come in. Everybody, including people without depression, need to just talk sometimes. Because I suffered from pretty severe depression, meaning my friends were extra on edge, I couldn't say anything without hearing about it from student life. Eventually I talked less and less because of that. Is that a good way to help depression in schools? To promote reporting friends to the point you don't even want to talk about your feelings with them anymore? Because that is what most colleges do. What should happen is this: friends should encourage people with depression or other medical issues to go see student life or student health. Schools should promote making a personal decision to seek help. I know that people with depression may not make the choice to do that, and that is scary. But all this reporting nonsense will do is make students with health issues want to talk to their friends about it less.
Secondly, student life acts as a business. While they may care about individual students, they act in a way that benefits themselves. If keeping a student on campus means more work for them, out they go. Rather than be a place for students to talk about what they are going through, it is a place that acts in the best interest of itself. Not its students. Again, this is wrong. If you don't want to do what is best for the student, do not work in the student life office.
Student life, at least at my school, has the power to send students home on medical leaves just like that. It's as if student life suddenly knows what is best for a student they have known for very little time. In some cases, students do need to take time off. But they should have a part in that decision. If a student is a threat to themselves or others, then that is one thing. But to just send students away is wrong.
When I was sent on leave, I was told it was because I was negatively impacting my friends. Nothing like adding to my depression by making me feel guilty, right? Again, this is not sending me home for my own benefit. This is sending me home for the benefit of everyone else while acting like it is for me. Now, I will say that I did need time off. But to frame it as if it was for my friends and not for me is completely wrong.
I could go on and on. Colleges and universities across the country are handling mental and physical health issues incorrectly. People are less inclined to talk about their feelings, and it has become a business. Schools need to start dealing with the issue based on what the student really needs. I am perfectly aware that somebody with depression may lack good judgement to make that call, but schools need to begin to work for the interest of the student. Depression is running rampant in this generation, and colleges and universities across America are not helping solve the problem.
