The State of Depression in College

Author: Lindsey Whitton

A Middlebury student stares at the florescent glow of her computer screen for an hour. She doesn't really move. After a while, she turns the machine off and lies down on her bed. She has a lot of work, but she can't make herself do it. She didn't make it to dinner — it was too cold out. She doesn't seem to remember the last time she saw the sun. Suddenly the walls seem to be pushing in around her. She squeezes her eyes shut, and she thinks that death might be the only thing that could save her from this agony.

Scenarios such as this, unfortunately appear to have become more common across United States college campuses. While it is difficult to quantify the percent of depressed or anxious students at specific schools, the number of visits to counseling services, the percent of students on prescription drugs and the number of suicides have all increased nationally, according to a recent article in U.S. News and World Report. The percentage of college first-years who report less than average emotional health has been rising markedly since 1985, according to an annual nationwide survey by the University of California, Los Angeles. Between 33 to 40 percent of Middlebury students refer to the counseling service during their college years.

College counseling services are swamped with students suffering from depression and anxiety. Many colleges have started limiting the number of client sessions offered to students. The limits range from four to 10 visits but even then the counseling offices have had to significantly increase their staff. Sometimes students complain of being shuffled from one counselor to another. One Yale University student who was anxious his second year at college never saw the same therapist twice. "It felt like the person I was talking to wasn't really there," he told U.S. News. "I wouldn't want to go there again, but what else is there?"

Another problem associated with the overload of unstable students is that, in a few visits, many deeper issues cannot begin to be addressed. "We let students know from the beginning that we offer primarily short-term counseling," said Sam Cochran, the director of counseling services at the University of Iowa.

The reasons many experts cite for such an increase in mental health problems on college campuses are numerous. The current college generation grew up at the height of the disintegrated American family, for example, and college students are more accustomed to therapy and medication as solutions to their problems. Competition is so intense for college admission that many students burn out, while children with severe psychological problems are now able to go to college with the assistance of modern medicine.

College counseling services have a difficult time dealing with their charges, both in offering assistance and with the legal issues involved. "This is an age group that is tricky," said Dewitt Crosby, a psychologist at Davidson College in North Carolina. "They are adults by law, but they're still dealing with making decisions on their own."

Middlebury has had a Counseling Center since 1972, and Gary Margolis '67, director of the Counseling and Human Relations Center, said that the College "has worked very hard and comprehensively to offer a range of counseling options." Resources currently available for Middlebury students include one part time and two full time counselors, two College chaplins, commons staff, residential staff and access to 24-hour, seven day a week phyciatric care through the Parton Health Center. Since Middlebury offers such a variety of care options, no one segment of the counseling web gets overloaded and thus made ineffective. This variety also allows individual students to approach their care through the means most comfortable for them.

Kathleen Ready, administrative director of the Parton Health Center, said that emergency phyciatric care is a significant reason that the Health Center is always open. "We can provide overnight care for someone who doesn't want to be by themsleves," she said. "No matter what we can refer them to a counselor [for immediate consulation.]"

Since 1966 Middlebury College has maintain "a very unique relationship with the Counseling Service of Addison County," Margolis commented. This is the oldest known colaberation between a community mental health counseling service and a college.

Margolis strays away from describing the current college generation as having a "declining state" of mental health but instead sees the increase is counseling as a result of "students being smart and using the very available free services." He also would not describe the American family as "deteriorating" but rather as "changing in how they exist."

Margolis does "think there are new stresses" for the current college generation "due to the speed of information and the ups and downs of the economy." He especially recognizes the stresses that students who have been accepted into competative colleges faced in high school and continue to face in college.

One of the first questions that he asks first-year and sophomore students is what their junior and senior years in high school where like as they prepared for college. Usually "that period is quite stressful," Margolis said.

The Middlebury College community has avoided most serious mental health disasters, however. The student who lies curled up in her bed, alone and depressed, will most likely get help fairly quickly. "We have really good intervention on campus," Margolis said. "It's small and people refer students to us." So despite signs that American college students' state of mental health is declining, the Middlebury College community seems to be feeling okay in general and talking about their problems when they don't.