For a population as fit and beauty-obsessed as the University’s, it comes as no surprise that we sport a prominent student culture of diet and exercise. Go to the Aquatic & Fitness Center before 10 p.m. on any given weeknight and you might have trouble getting an elliptical. Drive down JPA or Main Street after midnight and you risk hitting a rogue student jogger. Listen for how often a discussion about food includes the phrase “it’s only [insert number] calories”, asserted as a virtue. For the current University student population, such habits are a common aspect of how we approach health.
But even if we accept these micro obsessions for certain types of diet and exercise as consistent with good medical standards (they aren’t), our student culture of health and wellness is lacking, for a simple reason: it consistently (and often intentionally) disregards the importance of mental health. This generalization applies to our larger American culture too, but it adopts a different meaning in the more insulated and influence-susceptible college sphere. Particularly at the University — which prides itself for cultivating “student leaders” — we are asked to take a more proactive role in our own affairs. A simple commitment follows: our student community has a responsibility to give mental health the attention it deserves.
In this article — the first in a four-part series examining how the University approaches student mental health — I discuss the extent to which our student community neglects mental fitness. Given new, evidence-based findings on the psychology and neurobiology of well-being, we limit ourselves by continuing this streak of ignorance. Though the human brain remains one of biology’s most daunting frontiers, we know enough for individuals to understand and regulate their mental capacities as they do their physical ones with diet and exercise.
Student Council’s Safety & Wellness Committee is the University’s central student group for matters of general health and safety. Sit in on any meeting and you may notice it accurately reflects the concerns of the student population. That is, it tends to prioritize matters of nutrition, exercise and physical safety. Undoubtedly these are essential issues, but what about mental health? It infuses every part of student life — academic and social in particular. Doesn’t that entitle matters of mental well-being to roughly half of the committee’s attention and energies?
The committee’s problem directly parallels that of the student population as a whole. Too often, attention to mental health issues comes and goes virally. For example, the challenges of suicide and depression were foremost on students’ minds for a mere week or two after the death of Jake Cusano last spring before attention moved back to usual topics. Fleeting interest is not sufficient to overcome student mental health deficiencies.
So what information are University students deprived of because of the student body’s limited way of approaching mental health? To name several of the basics: a) strategies for identifying and regulating harmful emotions like anxiety, depression and anger; b) methods for using positive emotions such as optimism to motivate ourselves for academic or personal goals; and c) a whole rubric of social competencies with strategies for building healthier relationships and improving interpersonal effectiveness. Many students gain an intuitive grasp of these concepts. Others might stumble into insight by accident. But only in a few remote corners of our University can students systematically learn about such critical life-skills. Moreover, arbitrary cultural attitudes about masculinity, femininity, mental-health stigma and weakness often inhibit individuals from discussing such mental competencies in detail.
But the deficiencies in how we approach student mental health consist not only of how little we speak and think about psychological issues, but also the topics we choose to focus on when the ice is broken. When we discuss mental health, we tend to focus on abnormality and dysfunction. This tendency is the legacy of decades of psychological research neglecting “softer” topics like happiness and optimism in favor of mental illness. Such habits relay the subliminal (and false) message that lacking a serious mental disorder implies satisfactory psychological health.
If our knowledge of the human mind were limited to mental disorders, then perhaps confining our conversation to such topics could be rationalized. But this is not the case. Growing subfields in psychology and neuroscience emphasize a departure from traditional psychology, seeking to figure out how to make “normal” life more fulfilling rather than merely treating mental illness. Though I will discuss the implications more fully in a later article, recent research addresses — as a 2000 issue of American Psychologist illustrates — “what enables happiness, the effects of autonomy and self-regulation, how optimism and hope affect health, what constitutes wisdom, and how talent and creativity come to fruition.”
Taken together, such studies imply (or state explicitly) a specific, practical rubric for how we as individuals may improve our own mental well-being. So instead of leaving our mental health up to chance, let’s approach it like we do dieting or exercise. Let’s encourage habits like emotional regulation, the cultivation of optimism and the management of positive relationships. The science is not only firmly grounded in neurobiology, but also arrives packed as strategies ready to be incorporated into daily life. For all the energy we students put into finding happiness and meaning, is a little self-education too much to ask?
George Knaysi is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. His columns run Tuesdays. This is the first column in a four-part series examining mental health at the University.
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