The Kids Are Not All Right: College Mental Health Needs an Intervention | Big Think

There’s no legal requirement for schools to provide health or mental health services to their students. Colleges do it because it’s the right thing to do and because it’s prudent. I think there’s a growing understanding, and it’s something that we at the Jed Foundation are trying to really make schools aware of, that it’s in the school’s and the student’s best interest to provide a really broad array of support services to their students.

The more we can keep students on track, doing well in school and getting to the graduation line, the better it is for everybody involved. One of the big challenges in providing services is that most schools actually provide these services for free. It’s very, very rare for colleges to charge for the mental health services. Of course, students and their parents would say they’re charging plenty already. But services are usually provided without extra cost to the students, and that creates a real challenge for the schools to balance the cost and benefit of the range of services they’re providing.

The other challenge is that in the 18 to 25 year old age group, many people have had either no experience with health or mental health care. People who’ve had experiences as teens often haven’t had the greatest experiences because they’ve often actually been forced into treatment or, you know, sent to treatment outside of their own will. So getting the people who need treatment into the system is often a very, very significant challenge.

And then it’s a challenge for the system to have the resources, the personnel, the number of clinicians and visits in order to take care of everybody who needs care. The one thing we do know is that college students drink more alcohol than their non-college attending 18 to 25 year old cohort. So clearly we know that college is a risk factor for increase in alcohol use.

And there are a series of problems that are coincident with that, and that does present a serious concern. We know about a third of college students will report an alcohol binge every two weeks or so. So that’s a really significant number, and we know that there are a lot of negative consequences associated with especially the high intensity drinking that sometimes goes on. We know that there are fights that occur.

Obviously, car accidents that occur. And unfortunately, there’s been tremendous concern recently about the increasing awareness around sexual assaults on campus, and we know about two percent of students who drink report that they’ve had a nonconsensual sexual contact in the context of drinking. And while that sounds like a low percentage, the denominator of that fraction there are about 20 million students in college, and about 70 percent of them drink.

Two percent of 70 percent of 20 million is something in the range of 300,000 incidents of nonconsensual sexual contact. That’s actually a staggering number. Leaving for college, going away to college, especially if you’re away from home for the first time, is a period of time of tremendous excitement and opportunity and, you know, thrilling challenges and increased freedom.

And at the same time, a lot of things are happening. It may be the first time you’ve actually been, or spent time, or lived away from home for any significant period of time. It’s also a time of great psychological and maturational development. It’s a time where you’re really making more strides toward growing up, towards establishing goals in your life and establishing serious relationships potentially.

There’s a lot happening in your brain, and there’s a lot happening outside of you in your life, and a lot of decisions and changes to contend with. There are ways you can prepare yourself for that. Learning about, you know, basic life skills. Learning how to take care of yourself is one of the things hopefully you’ll have an opportunity to do while you’re in college, but it’s good to come there with some of those skills already in hand.

A lot of these challenges can sometimes reflect themselves in increased levels of anxiety or depression.