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Let’s Talk About Mental Health

This is not the article I would have planned to write today. But, at the risk of a total cliché, it’s the one that I feel I must write.

I didn’t know her personally, but when I heard the news Thursday morning, I was shocked. And then, I thought – could this have been prevented?

It’s an open secret that mental health on this campus is not frequently talked about. For all its boasting of being “stigma-free,” the topics of depression, mental disorders, and suicide are practically taboo. It’s common to hear jokes about how overwhelmed students are by it all – work, classes, extracurriculars, life. But it’s hard to find something meaningful in terms of support or dialogue. It’s not necessarily the administration’s fault, per se – apathy is a campus affliction, and for many of us, ignoring the topic is our coping mechanism of choice. But what happens when we leave the bubble of campus? How much more must happen to us, as a student body, before we collectively hit a tipping point?

My high school grappled with something similar. Six months after I graduated, an explosive article in The New York Times reported how my school district had spent years ignoring mental health in favor of pumping out high-achieving students with Ivy League letters. In 2015, 120 middle and high school students were recommended for mental health assessments; 40 of those students were subsequently hospitalized. The article then diverged into talks of racial divisions, which misrepresented the reality of the situation, but the overarching message was clear: in a STEM-centric school, the haphazard focus on mental health just wasn’t enough. The school district’s answer? To implement a program focused on developing the “whole” child, implementing mandatory days where students couldn’t be assigned homework and eliminating midterms and finals.

The deployment of that program had mixed results. In my opinion? It was a placebo and failed to address the underlying issue at hand – changing the way students approached mental health.

Of course, existing attitudes towards mental health can be difficult to understand and ugly to dissect. For my part, I know it’s a topic I rarely talk about, only because I don’t know where to begin. How do I make my audience comfortable with the uncomfortable things I am about to say?

My family has a history of depression. Undiagnosed, untreated, and, if I’m being honest, nothing short of severe. But there’s an explanation for that, too. In many immigrant cultures, depression and mental health issues are considered a sign of weakness, and they are ignored. The fact that those attitudes bled onto their children is not a surprise – it was the way we are raised. But as I told a friend, it is not necessarily the way we must remain.

Here is the reality of the situation: 6% of undergraduates and 4% of graduates in 4-year colleges have “seriously considered attempting suicide” in the past year. Nearly half of each group did not tell anyone. The suicide rate among young adults, ages 15 to 24, has tripled since the 1950s. The rate of suicide is growing faster among young African Americans than it is among young Caucasians. Native Americans have the highest suicide rate of all 15 to 24 year olds, while Asian Americans have the highest rate of suicide among women in that age range. Men commit suicide four times as often as women, while women attempt suicide three times as often as men. The emotional health of college freshmen has declined to the lowest it has ever been in 25 years.

Mental health is nothing short of a campus crisis, and that is the urgency with which we need to approach it. I’m not a psychologist, and I cannot offer professional advice or any sort of real closure to anyone affected. But what I can say is this: reach out to friends, classmates, whoever. Take time to heal, but when you’re ready – talk it out. I don’t expect it to be an easy or comfortable conversation. I don’t expect it to suddenly fix everything. But talking about these issues is half the battle won.

My heart goes out her friends and family for their loss.
And to the girl affected – I hope she found peace.

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