Hello World!

College – the promised land. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been told that if I just made it to college, things would be okay. If I just worked hard enough in high school, I would be on the right life path and things would figure themselves out.

In reality, when I got to college I was burnt out from high school, feeling like a minority for the first time, and experiencing rejection for the first time. By my sophomore year of college, I was clinically depressed.

Imagine how shocked I was to find that when I finally mustered the guts to reach out to the student health center that not only did I have to set an appointment for a phone evaluation first, but in order to speak to a professional in person, I had to wait my turn on a six week wait list.

Six weeks? Do you know what can happen in six weeks?

Only bad things. Ultimately, I did not get any professional help, and proceeded to have the worst 4 months of my life. My grades suffered, my relationships suffered, and two years later I am still dealing with the repercussions. 

For some reason, it’s not really acceptable to talk about the hard parts of college. No one wants to be the guy who says college wasn’t all that they thought it was going to be. Nobody talks about how genuinely terrifying it is to be paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a degree they aren’t even sure they want. No one posts on Facebook about how scary it might be to pursue your passions – or even worse, not know what your passion is and where to find it. That’s not to say there aren’t good times, new friends, and awesome triumphs. In college you definitely experience the highest of highs, but with those highs also come the lowest of lows. And while some are able to handle these experiences with grace, what we see on social media is a completely inaccurate portrayal of reality.

Since my sophomore year I have slowly worked towards living a healthier and more meaningful life. However, my experiences have only opened my eyes to the lack of conversation about mental illness and lack of resources for students on university campuses.

Mental health is a fundamental driving force in personality development. It determines someone’s entire quality of life and how they interact with and interpret the world around them.

So how is it that recent studies in 2011 have found more than 40% of U.S. students were depressed during their four years in college, and that in the last 20 years the likelihood of a college student suffering depression has more than doubled, with suicidal ideation tripling? My story is a testament to the following statistic: up to 85% of students with positive screens for mental disorders do not receive any treatment from professionals, even with available resources on university campuses.

The reason I am writing this blog is because I believe that the lack of conversation about mental health resources on university campuses is a dangerous oversight by school administrators. In this blog I will be discussing the cross section between mental health services and university campuses. I hope to explore the fundamental issues in young adult mental health crisis, the negative and positive effects of technology on communication, and treatment and prevention methods found effective in addressing the mental health epidemic among university students.