Link – Colleges Get Proactive in Addressing Depression on Campus
First, good for colleges to recognize the problem and fund research into the best ways to help these young people get the help they need.
With that said, I wonder about these paragraphs:
“In the past, many of the students on campuses today “would have been weeded out before they got to college,” Dr. Moneta said. “Therapies and treatments have enabled kids who have never been to college to be there. Once there, it’s about maintaining their ability to stay.”
In addition, economic anxiety about the future and the high cost of college now (which can top $70,000 a year at private schools) puts great stress on students who worry that a grade of B may ruin their career chances or disappoint their parents who are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
I have a question. Yes, we’ve done a better job at helping get more people in to college who maybe wouldn’t have been there before, but is that always a good thing? Is the stress of college and the costs involved a good place to also be dealing with depression and anxiety?
Would it be better to do something else and go back to that later, when you may have more tools to assist in dealing with that stress?
Of course, that presumes that we as a society have career and professional options that don’t assume that everyone should go to college at 18. I’m not sure that we have enough options for young people who maybe shouldn’t go to college just yet.
How much is that contributing to the rise in depression and anxiety on campus?
I’d be curious to know.
