Deteriorating mental health in colleges

October 26, 2009 by Yamini Piplani 

Psychological wellness important to safe, productive education

The mental health of college students is an issue that should be paramount to a society where an increasing number of students seek higher education.

More than before, students today deal with cross-cultural issues, family dysfunction, poor frustration tolerance, experimentation with drugs and alcohol and weak interpersonal attachments. Many students also lead “hyper-enriched lives,” with their cell phones, computers, classes, jobs, sports, travel, volunteer work and more. All this is too much to handle for some students.

We know more college students are seeking psychological help today than ever before, a claim documented by the fact that “college counseling centers across the country [are reporting] increased frequency and severity of students’ mental health concerns.”

We also know that violent, criminal behavior is often linked to a student’s mental health.

And the role of psychological services on a university campus is more important today than it has ever been. Their achievements aren’t often publicized because their successes are documented in crimes that never occur.

We know that, in general, campus safety across the country is fairly satisfactory.

We know that issues of harassment and robbery are common, but every so often, we hear of a heinous, violent crime on a college campus. Nearly every news report covering such events points to the fact that these are isolated incidents, and in most cases, they are.

But what worries me is that we don’t know anything about these criminals until after they have murdered someone. If these people act abnormally before they commit crimes and there was someone on campus to notice and recommend help, could these crimes be prevented?

How many potential criminals are prowling around on college campuses across the country? But more importantly, how many of them have gone unnoticed because they sought mental help at the right time?

We all heard about the massacre at Virginia Tech, the shootings at Northern Illinois University and the woman who was found murdered and stuffed in the wall of a Yale laboratory. On Oct. 8, a UCLA student slashed the throat of a fellow classmate. We heard about that too, as it was all over the news.

But we never heard about any of those individuals who were prevented from committing similar crimes.

A survey done by the American Psychiatric Association in 2008 revealed that 30 percent of all college students had felt so depressed at one point that in the past 12 months it was hard for them to function.

In addition, “10 percent of those surveyed said that they had been diagnosed or treated for depression and 6 percent reported they had seriously considered suicide.”

A separate study showed that one in five college students was affected by alcohol disorders and 17.7 percent of all college students had personality disorders.

In July, another report concluded that depressed students were twice as likely to drop out of college.

Even as campus security improves and more psychological services are offered on campuses, there seems to be an obvious trend pointing to the decline in the mental health of college students.

This decline in mental health will have a direct impact on college life. While this decline might not always increase violence in universities across the board, a healthy and intellectual academic environment is crucial to the college experience.

Given all the studies on mental health of students, funding cuts to such services will have a detrimental affect on the student body.

Though we cannot always predict mental health-related crimes, university staff and parents must start paying more attention to these issues.

We must make it so that reports by professors, parents or friends of suspicious behavior do not go ignored due to bureaucratic restrictions in laws.

More importantly, we must ensure that psychological services are always available to those who need them.