It is not breaking news that college years are filled with wild emotions.
From the moment we step on campus, we are overwhelmed with new feelings and experiences we never knew existed. Feelings of anxiety and stress are almost inevitable.
For a lot of students, the highs and lows that arise in the teenage-turned college years are a culmination that turn life into a rollercoaster, one that is action-packed and exhilarating. But for a notable number of others, the dips in the rollercoaster can last too long, leading to severe depression and related mental health disorders.
About 11.4 percent or about 2.8 million U.S. adolescents have had at least one “major depressive episode” in a 12-month period, according to the 2014 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Subsequently, this report adds that this number has grown in recent years. Statistics offer undeniable proof of the significance of depression in college students, and the only sensible solution is that every person enduring mental health issues deserves to receive both help and respect. But is this always the case?
Last summer, I worked in the women’s unit at New York-Presbyterian Psychiatric Hospital. To say the least, my perspective on the human condition transformed. A study by the Pew Research Center states that teen girls are most likely to experience depression, with 16 percent experiencing a major depressive episode in the past 12 months. I had always been aware of these unsettling numbers, but not until I stepped onto the psychiatric ward did numbers become truth.
I met women my age, women who were in combat with the monster that is a chemical imbalance in the brain. They struggled with every type of illness from chronic depression to schizophrenia. I helped these women. Fetching the shampoo they requested, changing their sheets, opening the doors for their visitors. However, what was paramount was the wonderful, intelligent, powerful conversations I held with them. This being said, I could discuss my experience for pages, but if I could compress those six weeks down into one word, “stigma” is the one that comes to mind.
When we hear “schizophrenia,” many associate the word with homelessness or volatility. But people with mental illness are not simply the man portrayed in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho.” The people who don’t grab headlines are those like Elyn Saks, a renowned professor of law at the University of Southern California, and the author of a brilliant and critically acclaimed memoir. For me, this book, “The Center Cannot Hold,” sparked a sort of love for psychology and fascination with the stigma that comes along with imperfection of the brain. Saks puts it beautifully, “No one would ever say that someone with a broken arm or a broken leg is less than a whole person, but people say that or imply that all the time about people with mental illness.”
To answer the question posed earlier, no this is not always the case. College students and others suffering from mental illness do not readily receive the intervention they need.
This is not only a public health concern but a crisis. There is a lack of appreciation for any mental illness that presents itself. The alarming thing is that it is 2016, and here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, when an appointment for a counselor is made, it takes 3-4 weeks for the student to meet with a counselor. The harsh reality is that there is a deficit of psychiatric resources and funding to serve people with depression. In a country like the United States and at a university like UW-Madison with all its wealth and resources, it is a tragic commentary.
Stigma precludes people from seeking help or even identifying as needing help. In order to receive attention and help, they wait until a crisis hits. This is not an issue of those with mental illnesses but of an emergency that is the shortage of attention, money and resources involved in treating mental health issues. I have had close friends here that reach out to their parents when they think they are having mental problems, only to be told to wait until it gets worse. Would they be told the same thing if they had an infected wound on their arm?
On their website, UHS acknowledges the delay in mental health appointments, but they declare, “If you are having a crisis or feeling suicidal, call us…You’ll be connected with a counselor through our crisis intervention services.” The true drawback here is the use of the word “crisis.” Why must people wait until they have a mental breakdown or crisis to receive the adequate help they should have gotten in the first place? Do not get me wrong; I was lucky to have had the experience I did. Working with mental health issues first-hand forces a sense of understanding and empathy. But collectively, we need a heightened vigilance to recognize people’s needs, and to reach out before things get to the point of crisis.
We need to look around and be sensitive to those we care about. We have a civil responsibility to help each other, to not be afraid of discussing illnesses that cannot always be seen.
When writing this piece, I was deciding between discussing either mental health or physical health, but the two are inherently intertwined. We don’t wait to call the doctor when we can’t get out of bed from a burning fever, why wait when we can’t get out of bed from a burning mind?
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