Education Issue | Pittsburgh | Pittsburgh City Paper: College students can be especially vulnerable to mental health challenges for dozens of reasons, including living away from home, making new friends, figuring out how to be an adult, and coming to terms with harsh realizations about the world. For many college students, the arrival of the pandemic in 2020 thrust them unexpectedly into an even more confusing realm.
10 comments:
Okay first off, this statistic is shocking: by the end of the study, “61% of our participants were at risk for clinical depression” that’s a 90% increase! I’ve seen some studies before the pandemic where depression symptoms dramatically improved when they were forced to work out multiple times a week. However, what confused me was when the article said that when they asked a group of them to do that very thing, there was no improvement. Which makes me think this was just another example of correlation and not causation since there are a lot of other factors that could be contributing to the depression, not just how many steps they took per day. Human connection and contribution to a community, extended hours in front of a screen, confinement with an abuser, and lack of sunlight due to being indoors are just a few more that I could think of. Physical activity is definitely something do think about when we are talking about self care. As someone who is at risk for depression and anxiety because it runs in my family, I need to be super conscious about my lifestyle choices and try to give myself the best chance that I can.
The statistics in this article are jarring, but not exactly shocking to me. Talking about mental health, whether anxiety or depression or anything else, is a huge topic all by itself. Layering on the pandemic we have now been dealing with for a year?? That is a broad topic with so much depth. In my personal experience, the combination of a pandemic, starting college, moving into my first apartment, and trying to figure out the whole adult thing definitely has taken a toll on my mental health and I am very well aware of it. Physical activity is something I’ve had discussions with people about, as it pertains to mental health– for me, that comes in the form of walks everyday (ranging from 2 to 6 miles depending on how much time I have). Really, it's simply to get me out of the apartment and away from my school work for some amount of time. This was not a shocking article, but very informative.
Given the mental health issues I, and the people around me, have been struggling with it is by no means shocking that there has been such a drastic increase in anxiety, depression, etc across the board. But it is still saddening so see the statistics and realize the extent of the severity. Like Maureen, my go to for destressing is going on walks but I haven't been as good as them about doing it regularly. It's usually more like when I'm so stressed I can't wait any longer to go somewhere or do something that's not school. Having a community to surround yourself with and even a schedule to keep yourself accountable for your own health is something annoying but helpful that I've found. Usually I don't have to remind myself to go outside or see people but we're living in very different times right now. Taking care of our mental health can be harder with all the other new difficulties we have to deal with.
As the article said, these results didn’t come as a surprise to anyone, but some of those statistics are absolutely staggering. The fact the 1 in 4 young adults has considered suicide and 61% are at risk for clinical depression is mind numbingly sad. Anecdotally, I’ve always thought there is a correlation between physical activity and my own personal mental health, but it’s interesting that the researchers weren’t willing to assert that too aggressively. The monitoring of people’s fitbits was an excellent way to have the study done and it’s interesting that the average number of steps only decreased by a little over 50%. Because of the pandemic and lack of walking between classes, I would have even expected the number to be higher than that. The other thing I find interesting about this study is how they started off studying something else and had to shift because of the pandemic, but ten had usable pre and post pandemic shutdown data.
As has been stated in the article and by my classmates, the statistic of 61% of young adults being at risk for clinical depression is not shocking, but definitely disheartening. When I was reading the comments written by the others, I thought the 61% (a 90% increase since the beginning of the study) of young adults at risk for clinical depression was a statistic applied to right now, like 2021, but when I read the article, it said that statistic was applied to people in April of 2020, just two months after the study began, which is what is truly shocking and sad to me. I personally am constantly worried about my level of physical activity. I have definitely felt how much my physical activity has decreased but I always feel too overwhelmed to do anything about it, consequently I worry about it even more. It's a vicious cycle that feeds into itself and surely is part of the mental health issues that have been exacerbated.
I think that the lack of physical activity that early quarantine periods caused has made a lot of people feeling a lot more unmotivated than before, which is contributing to a lot of mental health issues. I know that my mental health personally has declined a lot since the beginning of the pandemic. I'm more unstable than ever, and can cry at the drop of a pin. All that being said, it is unsurprising that the percentage of people who reported feeling depressed because of the pandemic is bigger than the percentage before the pandemic started. I think that it really does contribute to the fact that we are expected to think so hard about all of our actions because they could make the pandemic worse. It is so stressful to live during a pandemic. I would not wish this on anyone. I really hope all of us college kids can start feeling better soon!
I must be a pessimist because I assumed the rate of depression among college students before the pandemic would have been higher. I’m curious, considering the three schools that conducted this study where all the students came from and how that might be a bias of the study. I imagine depression rates would vary for a school like UC Santa Barbara, which isn’t known for its academics, or MIT, which is known for its terrible handing of student health and high suicide rates. I think the default stress rates of a school are going to significantly influence how that school’s populations handles a major stressor like the pandemic. I don’t know if a high stress environment would mean students are better equipped to handle the stress of the pandemic, or if the high stress environment would just be exacerbated by the pandemic and they would feel it worst of all. I hope a metanalysis of this study looks into that, and how changes in depression rates correlate with baseline depression rates.
I cannot believe the numbers I saw in this article. I would’ve guessed us, but mental health represented quantitatively like this will always shock me. A 90% increase in risk of clinical depression in just two months??!!! That’s crazy. That’s not even considering the statistic that 1 in 4 adults contemplated suicide in June 2020. In what world are we living in that that’s okay? At the end of the article, it suggests talking about mental health openly and normalizing conversations about it, but I feel like we’ve already been doing a lot of that. Maybe it’s just my generation but almost all of my friends are comfortable talking about their anxiety and/or depression. I just don't know how much that can help anymore. There used to be a mental health taboo but now it seems like it’s taboo to not have a mental illness, which is not me trying to gatekeep mental illnesses, but rather me wondering why it seems that everyone struggles with anxiety & depression now days. What are we going to do about it? Medicating everyone can’t be the answer. We need to change some fundamental things about how we operate as a society, and we need to do it soon.
Like what a ton of people commented before me, I am not surprised by these statistics at all. I can see how the numbers can be jarring and hard to swallow for some, however these statistics are just reflecting what I have been seeing amongst myself and my peers. Having to stay within a room and constantly do school makes you feel insane after some point and frankly so does staying within your room and not doing school. Personally the sun and I have a very close relationship and if I go a couple days without propers sunlight I feel the gloominess and sadness and my overall mood is just down. I also struggle to get out of bed and find motivation to finish school when I am just listening to a bunch of people talk on zoom, not being able to have the regular classroom environment. College students are struggling and while most of us understand that this is how school will be until this pandemic is over, it doesn't negate the mental health strain that is being put onto to students. People now are feeling more alone than they ever did before, pair that with tons and tons of assignments, having to sit in front of a computer all day and no longer being able to see your friends you get the perfect recipe for a large spike in depression.
This article is eye-opening. A 90% increase in the statistic of depressed young adults is insane. It makes a lot of sense, as I think the pandemic has taken a significant toll on everyone and has caused people to reevaluate huge parts of their lives. For me personally, I enjoyed having a full schedule where I was constantly busy and had things to do before the pandemic. Now, having all that work taken away, it leaves a lot of time for self-reflection that I did not necessarily have before; therefore, I empathize with the people who have fallen into a depression over the course of the pandemic, as I understand how difficult it can be to be left to your own devices without responsibility. I am being pessimistic, but I honestly feel like nothing will help until the pandemic ends. As much as CMU can shoutout CAPs, for some people this is not enough until we can return to normal life. It also makes me wonder about the long-term effects on mental health by this pandemic, as I also do not expect a return to normalcy to magically cure everyone. It will be a long-term process to undo the damage of the pandemic once we are out of it, not only in the field of mental health, but everywhere.
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