College Students Are Starting To Feel Alone

Depression, one of the most commonly diagnosed mental disorders, is troubling college students at a intensified rate. Psychologists define depression as mood disorder in which feelings of sadness, loss, anger, and frustration  interfere with your everyday life for an extended period of time. Depression is caused by many different factors such as death, abuse, personal issues, feeling overwhelmed, and major events etc. Most college students fail to realize that they are afflicted by depression, which eventually takes affect toward their academic performances.

The survey “The American Freshman:National Norms Fall 2014” stated that 9.5% of students had frequently felt depressed during the past year. This is a significant rise considering there were only  6.1% of students that were reported five years ago. According to the American Psychological Association Survey in 2010-11 7% of students were hospitalized for mental health concerns, in 2011-12 The number had increased being at  7.8% , and by 2012-13 10.3% of students were hospitalized for mental health concerns(Novotney,Amy). This continues to affect depressed students and unfortunately their peers surrounding them. In 2010-11 it was reported that 2.4% of students intentionally caused serious injury to another person but by 2012 it increased to 3.3%. According to the article Depression among college students is caused by their inability to adjust to the culture of their university, changes in their environment, being away from their family, and new peers and influences. Mr.Buglewicz from New York Times says that “students may be getting the message that they have to take the last year of high school more seriously to get into college, so they're coming in with greater levels of anxiety”. Julia Fortier stated that “ you have to get good grades have all sorts of after school activities that take up tons of hours and you have to be happy and social you have to be everything and that's a lot of pressure to live up to sometimes” It’s almost as if it were a cycle. Many students worry so much about doing good in school that they overwhelm themselves, eventually become depressed and still end up performing negatively in school. I personally agree with Ms.Fortier. I am a full time college student trying to juggle school and all other full time  responsibilities I have. I gotta say it’s very overwhelming and as a college student I think colleges should have more resources for a student to go to when feeling this way.

Work cited:   

Alan Schwarz “ More college freshmen report having felt depressed” nytimes, February 5,2015.web September 12,2017

Kaisha Young “ depression is at all time high for college students” collegeusatoday.com, October 22,2016.web, September 13,2017

Amy Novotney “ Students under pressure”  APA.org, September 2014.web, September 12, 2017.