I spent two days on college campuses this week, talking to parents and students about mental health and mental illness. So many questions arose, so many kids suffer unnecessarily.

Here are some of the facts, as published by the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law:

• Many college students suffer from anxiety, depression and other mental health concerns.
• Anxiety is the issue most often mentioned by college students who visited campus mental health services.
• Students also named depression as one of the top ten impediments to academic performance as well as stress, sleep difficulties, relationship and family difficulties
• In the 2006 National College Health Assessment, 43.8% of the 94,806 students surveyed reported they “felt so depressed it was difficult to function” during the past year, and 9.3% said that they had “seriously considered suicide” during the year.
• More than 30% of all college freshmen report feeling overwhelmed a great deal of the time-college women, even more (about 38%).
• In 2006, more than 13% of college students reported experiencing an anxiety disorder within the previous year.
• While anxiety disorders are common for both genders, women are five times as likely to have them.
• Eating disorders affect 5-10 million women and one million men, with the highest rates occurring in college-age women.
• Thirteen percent of students reported experiencing an emotionally abusive relationship in the last school year.

If you are experiencing depression, anxiety, mood swings, sleep disturbances, delusions or hallucinations, or if you feel overwhelmed, immobilized, hopeless or irritable, there is treatment that can help.

You may also benefit from therapy to address common issues such as body image or low self-esteem, to help with a crisis involving your relationship or family, or if you are in the middle of a transition, such as beginning a new school.

Students who seek treatment are not “weak” or “crazy.”

Therapy is a hopeful and affirming act of caring for yourself.

If you are affected by any of these mental health issues, contact your primary care physician or your campus’ college and psychological services.

You can feel better.

Treatment works.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 at 4:26 pm and is filed under Addiction, Bipolar Disorder, Depression, Mental Health, Suicide. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.