Our View: It’s OK to struggle with mental health in college
If anyone has been following The Utah Statesman over the last semester, they already understand our view on mental health.
We’ve published columns on the topic and a three-part in-depth series on suicide. We at the Statesman, like many other organizations on this campus, take mental health seriously.
That’s not to say we’re trying to make it a bigger deal than it is or trying to sensationalize it — we’re trying to say we care.
We are students here, too. We get how difficult it is. We go home for holidays and talk to relatives on the phone to report how things are going, and hear replies of how things were for them in college.
We hear the fond reminiscing of the “best time” of their lives, and when trying to confide in them, we hear the comments of how our troubles were the same for them when they were in their 20s. They got over it, they say, and so should we.
Our small sample size of editors have had their share of struggles with depression and anxiety and not knowing where to turn.
To quote Krystin Deschamps, the student conduct coordinator in the Utah State University Student Services Office, in part one of the series on college suicides, “That’s the perception, that college is just this time where everything is easy, and the reality is that it’s a hard time.”
The reason we bring this up is because we want to let anyone struggling with depression or other mental health issues know that it is OK. We want to inform anyone who has had the luxury of not knowing how mental health issues feel that those who do endure these are not being lazy, weird or dramatic.
According to a Center for Disease Control and Prevention report, 7.6 percent of Americans age 12 and over have depression. If those numbers hold up with university enrollment, that means that 2,113 students at USU suffer from depression.
So we appeal to those of you struggling with depression and mental health. We appeal to those of you who have considered taking drastic actions. We appeal to those of you struggling with anxiety and any form of stress or mental weight: You are not alone, and there is help, even if it seems like there isn’t.
Most importantly though, it is OK to labor through college. It won’t always be “the best time of your life.” It is OK if it sometimes feels like the worst time of your life.