Link – Anxiety and Depression: More College Students Seeking Help

First of all, go read the article. There’s a lot to think about in terms of the lack of resources, despite the fact that college students probably have many more resources than other adults do. Still, not getting help during this time leads to adults who still need help, or are further impacted than they would otherwise be.

But, I also want to pry apart this quote:

“A lot of schools charge $68,000 a year,” says Dori Hutchinson, director of services at Boston University’s Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation, referring to the cost of tuition and room and board at some of the most expensive private schools in the country. “We should be able to figure out how to attend to their whole personhood for that kind of money.”

Yes, that’s true. But, I would love to see some studies that track how much the expense of a college education actually creates a lot of that anxiety and depression? We know that it seems like the rates of mental health issues have gone up in recent years, and so has the cost of tuition. When your entire future is dependent on getting degree(s) and then making enough money to pay off whatever debt you incurred to get there, you simply have no room to fail at anything. Every struggle with classwork is only highlighted when you look at how much it costs for you to even be there in the first place!

Maybe we need to figure out how to make a college education affordable again, and see if that helps with the stress and anxiety. Maybe having some freedom to actually learn about yourself and life when you’re 18-20 years old would improve the mental health of thousands of people without needing to find a ton of new therapy resources.

Clearly, something is wrong on campus. We should be looking at the entire system and how it fits into the larger society, for solutions.

http://time.com/5190291/anxiety-depression-college-university-students/