Disclaimer: This article discusses topics of mental health, depression, and suicide
The Stevens motto, Per Aspera Ad Astra, or “Through Adversity, To the Stars,” is indeed a stellar choice of words to describe the experience at this tech school. Students here, many of them in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, often experience heavy course loads, an unending and unrelenting list of deadlines and responsibilities, and a lopsided work-life imbalance.
We students tend to quickly bond over this shared struggle. What’s more, as a primarily STEM school, we are not alone either. An opinion article recently published in the American Chemical Society (ACS) Polymers Auby Christian W. Pester, Gina Noh (both at Pennsylvania State University), and Andi Fu (of University of Pennsylvania) titled “On the Importance of Mental Health in STEM” provides a host of statistics related to the growing mental health crisis present in STEM culture.
31% of individuals in the U.S. younger than 25 report some form of mental illness — depression and anxiety disorders being common. Moreover, around two-thirds of all college students are in this age group. Going to college, while offering several benefits, can also introduce several stressors that exacerbate mental health struggles. Pester et al. mention the difficulty in finding a community in a new place and resulting loneliness; “postevent blues,” a phenomenon where celebrating accomplishments quickly gets replaced by dread over the next big hurdle to overcome; and burnout, a prevalent “occupational phenomenon.”
STEM culture, in particular, feeds into the struggle, pushing the narrative that such fields are inherently challenging and require a great deal of adversity to master. A result of this, Pester et al. note, is “self-doubt” among students “about something being ‘supposed’ to be hard and whether the levels of stress and sacrifice are normal, appropriate, and, in fact, necessary.” Additionally, STEM culture can often play the “suffering Olympics,” where unhealthy behaviors such as lack of sleep to finish assignments are seen as signs of strength or fortitude and even bragged about.
Pester et al., after outlining these issues, spend the rest of the article sharing several practices that can help STEM students improve their mental hygiene — trying to get more regular sleep, attending therapy sessions, spending time with friends, going outside, listening to music, and exercising — as well as ways to support others who are struggling. But the point they stress throughout is that STEM culture as a whole must come together to combat the mental health crisis engulfing its newest members: college students and early-career academics or industry members.
Many groups on Stevens have sought to address some of these issues. Over the past few years, the Student Government Association has partnered with Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) to host speakers who have discussed destructive perfectionism, finding happiness, and raising awareness about suicide. CAPS and several other offices and student organizations regularly host mental health-themed or de-stress events.
However, the 10-year Strategic Plan released by Stevens last year only mentions mental health once (in reference to the struggles faced during the COVID pandemic), and its nine goals have, at best, an indirect relation to improving mental hygiene. Students also report that burnout or work-life imbalance makes it difficult to attend events mentioned above or work on mental hygiene on their own.
Downplaying the concerns of mental health can come with significant risks and end in unthinkable tragedy. This occurred in the 2021-2022 school year at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), a tech school like Stevens. Seven students died over the course of six months, six of them by suicide. The administration rapidly assembled a task force and hired an independent reviewer to determine supportive and preventative measures, which were implemented with rapid speed. Despite some criticism, the institution was open to the public about its struggles throughout, and those in the task force hope other institutions will follow suit in adopting such practices around mental health and mental hygiene.
No more students should have to die for universities to take mental health more seriously. From nearby institutions like WPI and Drexel to farther away schools like the University of Washington, STEM students are struggling with mental health. We will do our part to continue to support each other, but the leadership in academia must strive for much more than the promises of adversity before reaching the stars.
