Mental Health Challenges in College

Introduction

After conducting some personal research, some disturbing details have come to light. Everybody knows that mental health is a problem that many people have to live with for extended periods. Mental health can also cause many other challenges to the patient suffering from the mental condition. People do not realize that students in college are suffering from mental health struggles with their condition in a societal setting that does nothing to help them control or ease their mental challenges. People should be concerned with this issue due to the results that may occur. Since over half of the students with already diagnosed mental conditions drop out of school while others commit or try to commit suicide, this should be an issue causing public outcry for colleges to be involved more in providing support to students with mental conditions.

Background

People need to have many health conditions for their well-being, one of them being mental health. A person’s mental health refers to their psychological and emotional well-being. This means that a person suffering from mental conditions has problems with either their psychological or emotional well-being. Some of the most common mental health challenges include depression, anxiety addiction, an eating disorder. From a study carried out on college students with mental conditions, it was identified that only forty-five percent of the colleges could be considered to be involved in providing mental health support to their students, while the remaining fifty-five either try or do not get involved at all with the students (Eisenberg 64). One thing that people and institutions should consider is that the normal mental conditions that existed two or three years ago no longer exists. The students in college institutions have suffered through the pandemic, the black lives matter movement, and many more. All these events have increased the number and severalty of mental conditions among the students. Considering that one of the results of mental health conditions is committing bodily harm and suicide, college institutions should improve their reaction and support towards the students.

Body

One of the reasons colleges can be blamed for not caring about the student’s mental health is the pressure students get to succeed. Students with mental health problems have challenges with anxiety during high-pressure situations. Most colleges’ curriculum is meant to ensure high pressure on the students to mold them to qualified personnel ready for the real world, but they forget that they might be causing negative impacts on the student’s mental health. Some examples of how this is done are during class time. Some students have to attend lectures where the instructor rushes through the course work and leaves most of the work for the student. The student has to conduct further research and studies for each of their classes. For some students, the pressure to succeed in all the classes might be too much. The other example is where the colleges set pass marks for the students to be too high (Giamos et al., 140). The students are placed under pressure to perform excellently in all of their classes. The high pressure might increase anxiety for the students and cause or increase depression for students who did not perform as expected. Although academic excellence is important to students and colleges, a line needs to be set to ensure mental health well-being for the students.

The second reason many colleges are considered to not be considerate to students with mental conditions is the expenses. One thing about a college education is that it is very expensive. Students have to get students’ loans that pile up and make life harder for them. Apart from the college tuition that has to be paid, other expenses develop during each semester (Ketchen et al., 389). Many colleges are no longer educational institutions but business with the main target of maximizing profits from their services. Due to this, they add more expenses to the students such as expensive accommodation and meals. All these expenses might be too much for some students, worsening the students’ mental health conditions.

Most college students are adults. But these are new adults. What this means is that the students are people who have turned eighteen years old recently. The students might not have developed proper self-control and are free to make decisions that impact them and might scar them for the rest of their lives. In college, the students have access to all drugs available, both legally and illegally, without parental supervision (Giamos et al., 145). What this means is that the students can take drugs in the institution without worrying about the consequences. College institutions should be enforcing policies to make sure that the institutions are drug-free zones but fail to be strict on their policies. As a result, many students end up being addicts and negatively impacting their mental health. The most astonishing thing is that most college institutions will not be involved in any rehabilitation efforts for their students in or out of the institution. This is another way the colleges fail to offer support to students suffering from mental challenges.

In other institutions, awareness is one of the main agendas or tools to help students with various challenges. This includes information provided to the students on various challenges to make them aware of what to do when they are in any type of challenge. In colleges, mental health awareness is not a common thing to see. Most colleges do not have any mental health awareness programs, to begin with (Marshall et al., 1). The lack of information about mental health in the institution means that more students will struggle with the challenge they are suffering from for extended periods since they do not have anybody to help them or do not know what to do to handle the issue. This issue shows how important information can be to a person, in this case, to a student.

The second thing college institutions do not offer to their students, proving that they do not support students with mental health challenges, is guidance and counseling. Many students suffering from mental health challenges can have their conditions solved or the crisis averted by talking to a professional counselor (Ketchen et al., 392).  Since the students do not have time to go to other healthcare services institutions, it would be better for them to have a close counselor to deal with their issues without causing more challenges due to time and cost constraints on the student. The issue is that college institutions can and should provide guidance and counseling services to their students to help with mental challenges.

Apart from guidance and counseling, colleges should be equipped to handle mental health crises. Most institutions are only equipped to deal with physical health challenges but not mental health issues (Hunt & Daniel 4). Some mental health crises include when a student is going through a mental health meltdown, when a student is trying to commit suicide, or when a student is addicted to a particular substance. If a survey is done to see how efficient colleges are to deal with a mental health crisis, the results will show that almost none of the colleges in the country have the personnel or equipment to help the students. This is alarming for parents who want to make sure their children suffer from mental health issues even when they are not at home.

The other reason that college institutions do not offer the necessary services required by students suffering from mental health challenges is that they do not make the institution a conducive environment for students to receive help when they require the services. In most college institutions, there is a lot of stigmatization from both the students and the staff against people suffering from mental challenges (Hunt 5). The funniest thing is that the people causing stigmatization might be suffering from one form of mental challenge or the other. The stigmatization may cause the student suffering from mental health challenges to avoid receiving help, which worsens their condition and may lead to other issues such as suicide. The main cause of this is that colleges do not offer information to their students to inform them of the need for mental health and how to take care of others suffering from such conditions.

Most institutions ask for a medical record from their students when the students are reporting to the institution. However, it is rare for colleges and other institutions to inquire about their student’s mental state (Ketchen et al., 394). When a student sees this during their enrollment, they should know that this is a red flag, and they should be prepared to survive for the entirety of their course without receiving any mental health assistance from the institution. Institutions must know about the student’s mental health before the student enrolls in the institution. The information can be useful to the institution to help them offer the services they require in case of a mental meltdown or any other crisis.

The other thing that people suffering from mental health conditions require is social care and support. Close friends and family mainly provide this, and it goes a long way to help them feel safe and control their mental health challenges. The issue arises where some, or rather, most college institutions do not have anybody or clubs meant for students suffering from mental health (Ketchen et al., 395). Institutions fail to have or create a social setting where the students suffering from various mental conditions can feel safe and appreciated by their peers. Society can be critical to help the students with stress management and to help them keep track of their mental health concerns. The social setting around a person suffering from mental health is vital for their health; most colleges fail to realize that they are failing students by not starting or allowing the formation of the association or body for students suffering from mental health challenges.

Opposing View

People might have many reasons opposing that colleges are not suitable for people suffering from mental health challenges. Their main argument is that the institutions are meant to mold the students into people capable of surviving and thriving in the world. This means that since birth, students have been pampered all their lives, decisions made for them, and have people watching over them. In college, they learn to take care of themselves and how to manage on their own. They learn that their actions have consequences, and they should be willing and ready to tackle whichever obstacle comes their way. Although this is important for the students, preparation for the future does not mean that the student has to go through ordeals affecting their mental health.

Conclusion

In conclusion, mental health is critical to people and their well-being. Mental health refers to the psychological and emotional well-being of a person. Colleges are one of the institutions where most cases of mental health problems begin or are magnified. The main reason why this happens is that most colleges do not offer any support to students suffering from mental health issues. Some of the reasons proving that colleges do not offer the necessary infrastructure for students suffering from mental challenges include; colleges are high pressure and may lead to more psychological and emotional torture for the students. The financial challenges in colleges may cause more harm than good. Colleges do not offer treatment, social, or crisis management services to students suffering from mental health challenges. All these factors show how students are not involved in helping students suffering from mental health challenges.

Works Cited

Eisenberg, Daniel, Justin Hunt, and Nicole Speer. “Mental health in American colleges and universities: variation across student subgroups and across campuses.” The Journal of nervous and mental disease 201.1 (2013): 60-67. https://journals.lww.com/jonmd/Fulltext/2013/01000/Mental_Health_in_American_Colleges_and.12.aspx

Giamos, Dimitris, et al. “Understanding campus culture and student coping strategies for mental health issues in five Canadian colleges and universities.” Canadian Journal of Higher Education/Revue canadienne d’enseignement supérieur 47.3 (2017): 136-151. https://doi.org/10.7202/1043242ar

Hunt, Justin, and Daniel Eisenberg. “Mental health problems and help-seeking behavior among college students.” Journal of adolescent health 46.1 (2010): 3-10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2014.05.009

Ketchen Lipson, Sarah, et al. “Variations in student mental health and treatment utilization across US colleges and universities.” Journal of American College Health 63.6 (2015): 388-396. https://doi.org/10.1080/07448481.2015.1040411

Marshall, Lydia, et al. “Supporting mental health in schools and colleges.” (2017). https://dera.ioe.ac.uk/29743/1/Supporting_Mental-Health_survey_report.pdf