We need to talk about mental illness.
More specifically, we need to talk about depression among college ?freshmen.
A new survey conducted by UCLA found that 9.5 percent of college freshmen respondents had frequently “felt depressed” during the past year.
This is up from 6.1 percent only five years ago.
It’s obvious that something needs to be done.
Let’s just state the ?obvious here: college is hard. And that’s not just the classes.
For incoming freshmen, it’s transitioning into an entirely new life, in an entirely new town that might be hundreds or even thousands of miles from home. IU especially has a large population of out-of-state and international students, so the homesickness can be debilitating.
There’s so much pressure put on incoming ?freshmen to have fun.
“These are the best years of your life,” they say. “I sure wish I could go back and do it all over again.”
Oh, yeah?
You wish you could go back to living in a cramped, un-air-conditioned dorm room 300 miles away from home where you know literally ?nobody?
You wish you could take finite all over again?
And eat by yourself in the food court while staring at your phone and seeing how much fun your old friends are having on ?Twitter?
Yeah, we didn’t think so. College is not fun at first. It’s hard making new friends and adjusting to a new life.
It’s not like when you started school in kindergarten and could make friends by picking your nose and flinging it at the girl across the table.
If you do that in college, well, you’re on your own and probably don’t deserve friends. Social media only makes the situation worse.
People only post online what makes them look good.
So when you scroll through your Instagram and see your high school friends who went to different colleges having just oodles of fun, it’s going to make you feel alone.
So very alone.
“Look at all this fun that I’m missing out on,” you say. “Why can’t I make friends that easily?”
But it’s not easy for ?anybody.
They’re probably feeling just as lonely as you are; they just wanted to document a fleeting moment of happiness so everybody thinks they’re ?well-adjusted.
There’s so much emphasis on “the college ?experience.”
What does that even mean?
That makes it sound like everybody experiences ?college the same way. And if you don’t experience it that way — frat parties, red cups, ?gratuitous sex — you’re ?doing it wrong.
That is so very far from the truth. There are infinite ways to ?experience college.
The key is finding your niche, but that’s easier said than done. Until then, it’s possible that you’ll feel some ?depression.
People might tell you to “Try harder to make friends,” that you just need to “learn to love yourself.” Well that is easier said than done, too.
We need to stop putting so much pressure on ourselves to have fun in ?college.
And that goes for everybody, not just freshmen.
The only solution is to make mental health a ?priority.
And that, really, is pretty easily done.
