How to Save Your Mental Health When Attending College?

If you think that college years are full of joy and light-heartedness, then you are not a student for sure. Learners know how pressing and stressful a college routine might be. Not only they experience academic problems connected with overload and high expectations, but also they have to encounter all kinds of social, communicational, and financial hardships. These challenges may lead to serious psychological consequences, such as depression and anxiety. In turn, this may have a negative impact on every aspect of youngsters’ life. Sometimes, depression leads to low academic and communication functioning, which may lead to serious problems in future.

Recently, experts from Active Minds, an organization that explores students’ mental health, announced that more than 80% of learners report to be overwhelmed by their college life and 50% of them claim that they are feeling desperate. They say that most of these young people suffer from depressive states and stress, which leads to low performance, alcohol abuse, eating disorders, as well as problems with family and peers.

Life habits that lead to mental disorders

When teenagers leave their parents and start individual life at campus, they naturally fall into a number of harmful habits. They take part in various activities that certainly lead to negative mental results. Being excited that nobody is controlling them anymore, students stay up till late at night whether studying or partying, experiment with soft drugs and alcohol, and engage in other bad habits.

While a lack of sleep leads to stress level increase, drugs and alcohol boost anxiety, which impacts on academic activity and communication. Both habits lead to missed classes, failed tests, and disenchantment with oneself. Things become even worse when teenagers come back to these habits, trying to escape their mental hardships, which has an opposite effect.

Children need help

Students are seeking for help, when their college problems become too serious. Some of them decide to decrease the academic overload by requesting essay writing help, while the others find psychological safety valve in creativity and hobbies. Still, most of them seek for professional help of mental health professionals. Today, colleges pay more attention to psychological well-being and provide learners with more resources of assistance. What is more, college counselors are the only option for students from low-income families.

However, despite all efforts colleges apply, they cannot provide learners with fast and high-level support. The demand is extremely high, therefore some teenagers have to wait for weeks and even months before counselors accept them. For extraordinary and complicated cases, such a delay might be very dangerous.

Risky situations need fast reaction, because when students are left without any professional support, they experience serious problems with behavior. As such, self-harm and suicide rates grow dramatically and this happens because professional psychologists have no opportunity to help.

What do colleges say?

The research and survey carried out by Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors state that most institutions are aware of mental health disorders among students. College representatives admit that their students are reporting that they need psychological support. At the same time, not every student, who really needs help, reports it on time. While those, who do seek for professional services, rarely get appropriate attention.

Without psychological mentoring, most students risk to drop out or to harm themselves. However, considering the fact that colleges are not able to provide enough support, other measures must be applied:

• Students feel better when they have an access to friendly communication with their professors;
• Students need to have access to mental health service or at least mental health groups;
• Students need to get financial assistance with medicine and transportation.

Well-trained faculty

Mental health is no less important than academic success, because it is impossible to imagine one without another. Therefore, experts believe that colleges have to train both consolers and educators in psychological awareness. This way, they will have a chance to see any disorders and signs before it is too late. Also, educators and other college representatives should pay more attention to the atmosphere at campus and make it as friendly and carrying as possible. There are many factors that influence students’ well-being and colleges have to recognize their responsibility and protect learners as much as they can.

Problems with behavior, academic failures, and weak communication have serious connections with mental problems students may have. College life is a tough and pressing environment, so most teenagers have no idea how to deal with everything that overwhelms them that much. As a result, the rate of mental health problems rises year after year. While some students are seeking for psychological support, they don’t always get it on time. In other cases, the quality of psychological mentoring is too low. Unfortunately, this may lead to tragic consequences. Colleges should pay special attention to awareness and assistance when it comes to mental hardships experienced by learners. The availability of efficient psychological services is a problem that needs special consideration.