How College Students Lose Mental Health, and What Universities Can Do to Prevent That
Asher Notheis
They say that college is supposed to be the best four years of your life, and for many, it is. College is the one time that people get to enjoy the privileges of being an adult while also not having the responsibilities of an adult. Some students have even made lifelong friends during their time at college.
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For others, however, that is not the case. For some, college was four of the most miserable and lonely years that they ever experienced in their lives. And for some, their years in college were also their last ones.
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For many younger people, college is the most stressful time of their lives, and when that stress is combined with hard work, having barely anytime to spend with friends and even working a part time job, it can put people into a negative mindset. This mindset can be overpowering and can make the student do irrational things, such as drinking and even self-harm.
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College campuses are the home of hundreds of thousands of students over the course of four years. And while colleges do offer many opportunities for students to take advantage of, it might be possible that they are not taking the mental health of college students seriously enough. Yes, while colleges do want to make their campuses appear to be the happiest place on earth, college is also a time of hardship and stress, and universities ought to make sure that students know their options when they need mental help.
What Lowers Mental Health
There are a lot of factors that go into a college student (or anyone in general) going through depression. It is rarely just one issue that makes a student consider suicide; consistently getting bad grades despite studying for hours while others succeed where you fail is a prime example. But even recent global events can play a role in the decrease of the mental health of students.
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The Coronavirus had a major impact on the health of everyone. But mentally, people were incredibly effected, especially college students. College is often seen as a time when younger people can come together and hang out with each other whenever they want, and because staying at home and social distancing from one another was mandated throughout the world, getting together with friends became nearly impossible to do.
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A study recently performed by the Democritus University of Thrace discovered that the COVID-19 pandemic played a major role in students’ concern over the future, thus lowering their mental health. The fearful environment that the disease carried combined with the sudden change in learning (from in person to virtual) created a huge amount of stress among college students.
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But even before COVID-19, college students have been struggling with mental health, with one of the biggest reasons being excessive smartphone use. As demonstrated by a research study performed in Hong Kong last year, problematic smartphone use is correlated to higher amounts of anxiety and depression, as well as lower amounts of happiness and self-esteem.
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Financial concerns can also contribute to decreased mental health, as being uncertain if one will be able to afford what they need in college can add unneeded stress to a student. For some, this may even include if they will be able to afford their next meal. And when students are not fed, they cannot focus on their studies, which in turn lead to worse grades.
Research performed in California tried to analyze the relationship between food security and mental health, and discovered through their research that the two may be indirectly related. Students who had food security also had higher grades, while those who had food insecurity had lower grades. The students with food insecurity also experienced lower mental health issues, such as depression, sadness and anxiety.
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While these two examples do not directly confirm that excessive phone use or food insecurity cause depression (as correlation does not imply causation), the use of one’s cell phone can allow access to view others the way we could not 20 or even 10 years ago. When one compares themselves to others by only seeing their highs on social media, becoming depressed is much easier than ever before.
Why Students Do Not Receive Help
The causes of mental illness all play a key role in people experiencing lower self-esteem and depression. And it is especially concerning to know what the consequences are for ignoring mental illnesses. These consequences can range from dropping out of college, staying alone and away from others and even self-harm and suicide.
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A research project performed by BMC Psychiatry examined 3,275 suicides among college students and discovered that nearly 90% of the suicides had been diagnosed with mental illness prior to their deaths. This number speaks volume of the amount of impact that decreased mental health has among college students. And if universities continue to ignore this problem, the number of suicides among college students will only continue to grow.
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It should be noted that these consequences happen because the students that suffer from them do not get the help where it starts out at. Many students simply do not know where to look to help themselves when they are experiencing low mental health. And if students cannot get help, then they are more likely to make bad decisions while in college.
One of the ways that schools are not fixing the situation of mental health is through the lack of mental health teaching in medical classes. Natasha McVey, a former nursing student at the University of Nottingham, noted that many schools choose to keep physical care and mental health separate. McVey argues that because students are not being taught how to treat low mental health, they are not being the best nurses that they could be.
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“As adult student nurses it is crucial that we acknowledge that mental health is an area that we could do better in,” McVey noted.
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Even when students know where to look to receive help, they can have a hard time admitting that they need it. Their reasoning for this ranges from being looked down upon by others to not wanting to impact their image. This fear of asking for help is something that has not been well addressed by schools, and as a result, many students are still hesitant to ask for it.
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Research performed at the Swinburne University of Technology studied how employees who suffer from mental illness do so because of the fear that they will be viewed as inferior to their coworkers. Mirella De Lorenzo, the individual conducting this research, studied a woman named Betty, who always remained overworked and tired from the first day at her job and who chose not to reach out for help because it might hurt her reputation. Her boss was often very demanding, so asking him for help might make her boss think that she is not ready to work for the company.
“The costs of doing nothing are not only the loss of high-level employees like Betty,” De Lorenzo said. “But also a missed opportunity for dealing with the issue.”
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These examples show the problem that many schools have with dealing with mental illness on campus. While many schools do offer options for students, many schools fail to make these options known to them. And if students do not know where to look, they have a harder time receiving the help that they need.
What Can Be Done to Help Students
When looking at the causes of decreased mental health and the reasons that students do not look for help when experiencing it, one can easily see the need for schools to find ways to help combat this problem. But even people outside of the school can help contribute to finding a solution to this problem.
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Before students step onto campus, there are a few things that can be done to help them have the best experience on college as possible. The amount of preparation that a student has before entering college can make a world of difference in the experience that they have on campus. And that preparation starts at home, where the future students start their lives.
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A study performed in London showed how 10-20% of children and adolescents (ages 10-19) suffer from some form of mental health problems. That is roughly half of a billion people in the entire world who are experiencing low mental health at a young age. And when their problems are not properly addressed, those people will take their problems with them to college, where those problems will only be amplified.
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The reasons younger people suffer from mental health issues can be the result of many different things, but bad parenting is one of the most influential ones. To see if parenting does have an impact on youth, an experiment was done in 2019 to measure if the parenting of a child or the neighborhood that they live in affects them more, and the results showed that parenting is more influential to children than the location of where they lived.
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Even if the child lived in a poor neighborhood, they were mostly fine as long as they had good parenting. Children who lived in good neighborhoods yet had bad parenting, on the other hand, did not end up as well, and suffered from increased delinquency and mental health problems. So while some children may have had better living circumstances growing, other children received the proper care from their parents, and were better off because of it.
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But even if students get the love and care that they need from home, that still will probably not be enough to help carry them through the four years of college. Thus, when students are out by themselves at college, it is important for them to take the steps necessary in combating decreased mental health. The student can do this by taking action themselves.
Even though colleges do offer several programs intended to help students, most programs are not a one size fits all. As such, the best doctor that one can be can actually be yourself, and one of the ways that students can better themselves is through gratitude. If one takes a brief moment in the day to think of all the thing that they have to be grateful for, it can help both their mood and outlook.
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While this form of thinking may be viewed as cliched, research has shown that people who take time in their day (at least five minutes) to be thankful for the things in their lives can improve their wellbeing compared to students who did not. While this research was done in a smaller setting (and thus most likely could not be applied to a large group), it does demonstrate how much of a difference having a grateful attitude can have on a person. Even if their lives are pretty crummy at the time being, a student taking a moment to be thankful for what they do have can made an impact on their day.
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Even though students and their parents can do a lot to help themselves in regards to keeping their mental health up, universities should still make an attempt to make sure that their students are healthy, physically and mentally. While many schools already offer these, as previously stated many schools fail to make their resources known to their students. As such, one way that schools could remedy this problem would be to hold a public event that would be known to everyone.
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A research study performed by the American Psychological Association demonstrated how getting a community together to address the mental health of a group of people not only helps the group that is losing mental health, but also the community in raising awareness for the situation. The research performed here shows that when a school works together with the community to help their students, it not only helps the students but also brings the community closer together with the school. If more schools held events to help raise awareness for the mental health of students, everyone involved would benefit from it.
Conclusion
College is where many students get to determine what they are going to do with their lives. It is undeniably an important time of their lives, and with that importance comes a lot of pressure and stress that students carry. And as it stands, many colleges struggle to help students with that stress.
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Even though colleges offer many opportunities to students by providing pathways to new and better careers in life, the one area that colleges need to improve on is in helping students in maintaining their mental health. There are many factors that go into a student experiencing lower mental health, and when schools do not actively attempt to help students out, they fail to help the students have the best college experience possible.
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Maintaining mental health is something that requires all members to be involved in, of course. The responsibility of students keeping their mental health up does not fall entirely on universities, and as a result some work must also be done on behalf of the student and their parents.
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To ensure the students are successful in college and able to move onto the next stage in life, universities and their students must work together and see that they are getting the help that they need, both at home and on campus. If schools find a way to improve the wellbeing of their students, it will make both college campuses and the experiences that students have on them much better overall.
References
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De Lorenzo, M. (2014). Revealing the costs and consequences of hidden mental illness. Human Resource Management International Digest, 22(7), 36-38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/HRMID-10-2014-0142
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