Friday, November 4, 2016

Student Mental Health

Why are so many college students having trouble with mental illness? It is supposed to be a happy and exciting time of life! From the BBC:
The report author, Poppy Brown, is herself a student at Oxford University, conducting research on anxiety disorders. "The scale of the problem is bigger than ever before," she said.

"Yet support is hard to access, universities often underfund their counselling services, and the NHS does not recognise how vulnerable students are.

"In particular, there is often no consistent care between term-time and holidays. We need to tackle these problems," said Ms Brown.

Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, said that students starting university needed to know that support was available. "Mental disorders are most common in young adults, just at the age when many people become students," he said.

"Going to university can be stressful, especially for first-in-family students.

"Typically, you lose your established support networks, move to a new part of the country and take on large debts.

"Occasionally, it even ends in tragedy." (Read more.)
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3 comments:

Diamantina, aka Gentillylace said...

As someone whose college education was prolonged and whose time in graduate school was ended due to recurring severe depression on top of chronic dysphoria, I wonder whether more young people with a previous history of mental illness are being admitted to college nowadays, and young people who are diagnosed with mental illness while in college are being encouraged to stay in college and proceed to graduation. Prescription psychotropic medication can help a lot, and it is a bit of a shame that I did not find the right combination of psych meds until 2006 -- two years after I was obliged to leave grad school.

Previous generations of young people with a previous history of severe mental illness were discouraged from attending college, and young people who were diagnosed with a severe mental illness while in college were usually pressured to drop out. Nowadays, even with the many limitations of student mental health centers, I suspect that more students with mental illness are able to succeed at college. I have no idea whether this is true or not, however. What do you think?

Hans Georg Lundahl said...

"Why are so many college students having trouble with mental illness?"

Because they have trouble or bad luck with the shrinks evaluating them?

Because it is being made very much less independent and exceiting than half a century ago?

elena maria vidal said...

Diamantia, those are good points my dear. I think that there is an increase in depression and other illnesses because of the instability in society and home life. Even if a person has a good home life, they have to go to school with dozens of others who do not. Just my thoughts.