We are a nation of avoiders. We like beating around the bush, sweeping under the rug, and most of all, euphemizing. One of our favorite things to talk about (without actually talking about it) is when people are unhappy. Unfortunately, college, and all of the changes it brings, can serve as a breeding ground for unhappiness, anxiety, and major depression. In a speech in Newcomb Theater last week, Kay Redfield Jamison, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, emphasized just how detrimental a culture of avoidance can be for the mental health of the student community at large. Jamison's words should serve as a reminder to the University of its responsibility to inform unhappy students that what they are experiencing is both normal and treatable.
One stroll around Grounds may convince you that the few unhappy people here are probably holed up somewhere, perhaps in the deepest stacks of Alderman or maybe in the Engineering School. One thing is certain: they're not walking the main thoroughfares. The University consistently gets high marks among colleges for its quality of life and the happiness of its students. It may come as a surprise, then, that a recent study by the American College Health Association revealed that 36 percent of college students admit to feeling "so depressed it was difficult to function" at least one time in the last year. Forty-three percent claimed to have suffered at least one episode of functional impairment or inability to perform the most simplest of tasks. Counseling and Psychological Services, the University's resource for mental health treatment, reports 25 percent of its patients are on medicactions for mental illnesses. Such startling statistics suggest that those people you wondered about are closer than you think. Maybe you're even one of them.
Feeling "blue," "under the weather," or "not oneself" are all phrases we use to describe those who are feeling down. But we automatically treat it as a transient phenomenon, something that is due to the gloomy weather outside or yet another football loss. Like the clouds, it will pass, and the person in question will return to being his or her "normal self" again.
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