This week, when our deliberation group discussed our topic, mental health in the U.S colleges, it reminds me an article I have read before, in which the author claimed that about 40 present of international students in the U.S colleges are suffering from depression. I know a lot of international students, and most of them seemed really happy. Even they may feel stressed out sometimes, it was still far from depression. But I do think that students today are confronting much stronger competitions, and it’s likely that mental health is becoming an issue for college students. Therefore I did some research to see what is the situation.
Here is what I found. “Researchers from the World Health Organization, led by Columbia University Psychology Professor Randy P. Auerbach, surveyed nearly 14,000 first-year college students from eight countries (Australia, Belgium, Germany, Mexico, Northern Ireland, South Africa, Spain, and the U.S.) and found that 35 percent struggled with a mental illness.” This number is way beyond my expectation. Often times, people tend to feel that anxieties, as well as other related maladaptive behaviors, are just part of the college life. For instance, Sleep deprivation is legendary in college life, and many wear it almost as a badge of honor. However, the serious problems associated with sleep deprivation are clearly documented, and it’s also closely related to mental health issues or other domains. Other similar maladaptive patterns happen in many other aspects of college lives, including eating patterns, sexual, and drinking. All of these numbers and research have shown that mental health has become an issue in colleges, and some action needs to be taken.
One major proposal for this issue is improving the number of counseling centers in university and encouraging students to meet with professionals instead of self-medicating. Though schools around the world have made serious investments in mental health resources, the researchers found that colleges are still ill-equipped to deal with the surge of mental healthcare needs. The lack of access to counseling service cause many students to choose to self-medicating by drinking and doing drugs. However, “This just doesn’t work. In addition, the college years are frequently the time when addictions develop.” explains Dr. Sherry Benton.
However, some people believe that investing more in counseling centers is not the most effective way, and the huge amount of investment is required to provide enough access to mental health professionals. Instead, online mental health resources will provide students with low-cost accessibility to healthcare resources. It can also combine with the app for passive Symptom tracking. it can record movement patterns, social interactions (such as the number of texts and phone calls), behavior at different times of the day, and vocal tone and speed by built-in sensors in smartphones. In the future, apps may be able to analyze these data to determine the user’s real-time state of mind. Such apps may be able to recognize changes in behavior patterns that signal a mood episode such as mania, depression, or psychosis before it occurs.
solution-online mental care. All of these data would be extremely helpful for professionals to know better about the situation.
Besides providing more resources, it’s equally important to teach students how to determine if they need help. I have watched an interview with many people with depression, many of them said that at the beginning of their depression, they believe that they can address the mental health issue by themselves as long as they put some effort. But until they finally talked to the professionals, they realized that it’ not likely that people with depression can cure themselves by their thoughts. Now I think many people still believe people’s power in maintaining homeostasis, while that may cause a lot of unnecessary suffering. To address this issue, schools, especially high schools, and university should certainly shoulder the responsibility of educating students about these mental health issues and teach them to reach out for help once they found some early signs of mental problems.
Finally, some people also suggest to remove the cause of the mental health crisis, which is the pressure from schools, but I don’t think that is an option. College lives getting more competitive is a natural trend result from various aspects of modern society. The pressure and competition will always be there even though easing the burden of schools since school is not the origin of the competition, the labor market and the society is. Therefore, people should focus more on teaching students to embrace these pressures, and learn to seek help when they can no longer take it
Citation:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/04/4-ways-to-be-proactive-about-your-mental-health-in-college.html
http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/recognizing-warning-signs
I was surprised by the high percentage of international students who suffered from depression. I would assume that this is because they are far away from home, and thus they feel lonely. When you spoke about sleep deprivation, that really hit me because for the past few nights I have been having trouble sleeping. Even last night, I had 0 hours of sleep, so I apologize if my comments are a bit slow. I agree that colleges should take these sorts of issues more seriously. I attended a deliberation whose topic was similar to yours (it was about CAPS), and I came to the conclusion that Penn State should be investing more in mental healthcare because I know people who suffer from depression.