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Zander Melvin
Professor Morley ENC 2135 27 November 2021
What problems do college students face dealing with depression and other related mood and mental disorders
When we look at the issues facing our country today time and time again, we turn to look at what some call “the next major epidemic in the US” (citation) that being mental health. Mental health has had both scorn and stigma surrounding it to a level that other diseases and illnesses haven’t had to experience or have found a way to move past. However in our furthered understanding of mental health and mental illness the general publics attitudes seem to be slightly turning towards furthered understanding and support for those suffering from different mental conditions. With an estimated one in five, or nearly 51.6 million people in the United States alone suffering from mental illnesses according to the National Institute of Mental Health (Citation) it proves all the more that this is an issue that needs to be addressed. In finding how to change and to better deal with the issues of mental health moving forward, it is important to look at an important place in where the formation and/or intensification of said issues can happen, this being in school with teenagers. That being said it is important to ask the question of What problems do college students face dealing with depression and other related mood and mental disorders
To learn about some basic information on college students dealing with depression we can look at information from the Journal of counseling and development. In the paper “Self Stigma, Mental Health Literacy, and attitudes towards seeking psychological help” Lead author Hisu-Lan Cheng did some cursory research on mental health issues in American college campuses, and found information to use as a baseline for this research. Her team found that on college campuses a whopping 50% of college attending adults suffer from some form of mental illness, with an increased 64% of that group never having sought any form of professional help (citation). With such a large portion of college students suffering from some form of mental illness, what problems stand in the way of the 64% starting to get treatment and to keep many others from improving their conditions. The same article from Cheng offers some hypothesis for why such a large amount of people haven’t sought any professional help, some examples of these being “lack of culturally sensitive services… general reluctance to seek psychological help” (Citation)
Going back to the article from Cheng, she discusses that other societal issues such as race and ethnicity even go in to determining if symptoms are even considered to be a part of a mental illness and then on top of that going to determine the availability of help available to students based on the differing diagnoses.
Citations Cheng, H., Wang, C., McDermott, R. C., Kridel, M., & Rislin, J. L. (2018). Self-Stigma, Mental Health Literacy, and Attitudes Toward Seeking Psychological Help. Journal of Counseling & Development, 96(1), 64–74. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/10.1002/jcad.12178
(Understanding Health and Sickness Series) M.D. Patricia Ainsworth, Ph.D. Pamela C. Baker-Understanding Mental Retardation (Understanding Health and Sickness Series) - University Press of Mississippi
