“Maybe you had to leave in order to really miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was.” – Jodi Picoult
As I was “creeping” on my friend’s Instagram today, I scrolled past a picture of her decorated dorm room from a couple months ago captioned, “my new home.” But one of her more recent pictures featured her dog accompanied by a caption that said, “happy to be home!” Wait, what? Trying to establish home can be tough for college students. Personally, I struggle with the idea of life at home “home” and life at college “home.”
With Thanksgiving break around the corner, I am growing more and more eager to get to my home away from State College. Is what I’m feeling considered homesickness? Is homesickness even a real sickness?
What is homesickness? In a paper published by the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Chris Thurber and Edward Walton define homesickness as “distress and functional impairment caused by an actual or anticipated seperation from home and attachment objects such as parents.“
According to Chris Thurber, if you’re suffering from the condition, it’s likely that you feel some form of anxiety, sadness and nervousness. It’s very common for someone who is homesick to have an obsessive preoccupation with thoughts of home.
When I think of sickness, I assume there should be a treatment to accompany it. But wait; is it even a real sickness? Research says yes. Studies also show that the prevalence of homesick varies widely depending on how homesickness is defined, population being studied, and circumstances of separation.
Example: Prevalence of homesickness among young people in boarding school is estimated to range 16%-91%. Why such a wide range? Further digging led me to realize the researchers relied heavily on self-reports and the results reflected variation in its subjects’ recollection. When researchers measured the homesickness at the time the person was in the new environment, prevalence was 83% to 95%.
I find these numbers especially interesting. A significantly larger percentage of people said they felt homesick when they were asked while they were actually in the new environment as compared to the smaller number of people who said they felt homesick when they were asked in a familiar environment. So, what I gather from that is people are less likely to remember how homesick they actually were once they get back to a familiar place (home, probably). Also, the study didn’t consider what the subject’s home life was like. Maybe being away at school is an “escape” for the person, therefore, they long to be away from home. We should also consider a lot of clinical psychologists say that homesickness is linked with feelings and emotions instead of attachment to a literal home.
There are several ways to combat your homesickness. “Doing” strategies include distraction and social connection, contacting home, and getting social support. “Thinking” strategies include being optimistic, gaining new perspective, cognitive avoidance, and vicarious social support.
With the combination of new routines, social and academic pressures, and a new home (aka dorm room…which is coincidentally the same size of a prison cell), the longing ache for familiarity is definitely present. I know a lot of my friends who feel homesick cope by trying to avoid thoughts of home and do things to distract themselves. Personally, I cope by doing the opposite. If I’m having a hard day and missing the comfort and familiarity of home, I go to Starbucks, order a drink me and my mom always get, put in headphones, listen to Dave Matthews (my family’s favorite), and look at pictures that remind me of home and add them to my personal blog.
I think homesickness is definitely a real thing, and I think there are coping methods for everyone; you just have to do what’s right for you. I quickly found a method that worked for me, but not everyone is so lucky, and I’m sure the stresses of homesickness can affect people in destructive ways. With the high prevalence of homesickness on college campuses, do you think Penn State should provide more resources for students who are suffering?
