Why Your Child in College May Seek Mental Health Help

Even on the orientation day, the dean of the colleges and universities often stress the importance of performing well in classes, following their interests to build individual projects, and consider what career paths they want to pursue. These pep talks are usually directed at the parents, but students hear them, too. For many students who have never worked for a penny in their high school careers, the sudden realization of careers may be shocking and stressful.

For some students, they can push off the idea of careers for a while and think about graduate schools instead. Even in this case, they are, however, soon surprised how much work outside that the advisors usually expect from them. For students in law, engineering, and medicine, stellar GPA is only a part of what the professional schools anticipate of them.

Away From Home, Near Midterms and Finals

Dr. Jenny Hwang, the director of counseling at Stony Brook University stated, "Now they're [students] bringing in life stories involving extensive trauma, a history serious mental illness, eating disorders, self-injury, alcohol and other drug use."¹ Does this sound foreign to you? It shouldn't because this type of mental stress is felt by many students during midterms and finals week nowadays.

Some students are hesitant to share their problems with their parents because they fear that seeking help would imply that they were not trying hard in school or drinking and partying in the weekends. For others, the idea of coming to parents for help may not even come to their mind until the situation has already become too serious.

According to the National College Health Assessment in 2000 that used data of about 16,000 students from 20 public colleges/universities and eight private colleges/universities, approximately 10 percents of all students surveyed indicated that they were diagnosed for depression.² Just think about that statistics for a moment... We are no longer talking about a student or two in each school, but much larger figure that is clearly alarming.

The World of Numbers and Letters

Despite the seriousness of mental health in colleges, I personally think it is very unlikely that the system for employment and admission to graduate schools will change to accommodate more on the student's work ethics than other alphanumeric factors, namely GPA and standardized test scores. A blog from Harvard Law School stated following in half-joking, half-serious manner in 2005, "This [admission] is not just a numbers game - and I'm sure that I'll get more to that in another entry - but even so, you do have to take the numbers seriously. Your competition does."³

This post implied that while graduate schools will try to understand applicant's situations as best as possible, the acceptance will invariably boil down to grades and test scores because there will always be another applicant who is slightly better.

So, because the system will not change, at least anytime soon, the best thing we can do to cope with this growing situation is to keep the supportive minds to the kids in the colleges. It's like the idea of preventive medicine; mental health, too, is easier to deal with before it becomes a disorder.

Personal Tips

Here are personal suggestions to parents if you are reading this article.

1. Questioning why something went wrong is important, but also discussing solutions is critical, too (and listening to your child).

2. Making surprise visits or sending packages during midterms or finals week is always beneficial since when you are in college, you will eat about anything that's free.

3. Suggesting a schedule. Most panic and nerve breakdowns happen when the student has many things to do in a short amount of time. Teaching the concept of making a plan and sticking to it would definitely alleviate the stress levels from increasing indefinitely.

Works Cited

¹ Trip Gabriel, "Mental Health Needs Seen Growing at Colleges," The New York Times 19 Dec. 2010: A1.

² Joan Arehart-Treichel, "Mental Illness on Rise On College Campuses," Psychiatric News 15 Mar. 2002: Vol. 37, No. 6, p. 6.

³ J.D. Admissions, "HLS Admissions: The Buzz On Low LSAT Scores," HLS Admissions. http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/admissions/2005/10/12/the-buzz-on-low-lsat-scores/ 12 Oct. 2005.