What is your experience. This is really an important topic for families to consider and discuss with their student. My D has been fine but she has had several friends who have had real struggles.
I read an article in Wall Street Journal recently that included these statements and it makes me worry for our kids.
About 14.3% of college students were diagnosed with or treated for anxiety problems during the past year, and 12% were diagnosed with or treated for depression, according to a spring 2014 survey of 79,266 college students by the American College Health Association. That is up from 10.4% for anxiety and 10.2% for depression in the fall 2008 survey. Anxiety and depression are the most common disorders, according to the survey.
They included some good tips:
Teens should be able to handle several basic tasks on their own before college. Feeling comfortable with these tasks is particularly important for students with pre-existing mental health issues:
Make doctor/dentist appointments.
Get enough sleep—without parental prodding.
Make travel reservations and get to the airport or train station.
Advocate for themselves with teachers and other authority figures.
Manage a budget.
Manage emotional upheavals.
Source: Anne Marie Albano, Columbia University Clinic for Anxiety and Related Disorders
It could be interpreted as telling a young person to bottle up feelings. It is really healthy to avoid talking to someone else about them – or to seek professional help if the problem is severe or persistent? I don’t think so.
@Marian Yeah, maybe they could have phrased that one better. But I interpreted that more as being able to “manage” or “deal with” their emotions, rather than bottling them up. That can include reaching out to others, but that in itself can be problematic.
For example, a huge source of anxiety for me my freshman year was being undecided about my major. I was so scared that I would choose the wrong major and not enjoy it or do well academically. And I was also worried that if I waited too late, I would be forced to choose a major that I didn’t really want. I wanted to be super on-top of that issue. I must have made four or five appointments with my academic advisor, two appointments with the career center, and a few meetings with some department heads. I asked my peers and upperclassmen for advice. In addition, I spent a good amount of my free time researching and re-researching major requirements and blogs from my own college and other colleges. And of course, I asked a few questions on CC and spent a lot of time going through the archives to see what advice other people got. The more time I spent on that, the more conflicting information I got, which only boosted my anxiety even more, to the point that I was spending many nights just crying in my room about it.
So I think that managing emotional upheavals should involve reaching out to others, in a healthy way and when necessary. But it also includes being able to use coping mechanisms that are healthy, and also learning to not let emotional situations incapacitate you, like what emotions need to be dealt with and which ones need to be–not repressed–but accepted.
Overall, I would recommend that upcoming college students do a little introspection before coming to college. What situations might trigger a negative response, and what are some ways you can deal with that? I know that I can be a tad neurotic, lol. So most of the triggers for my anxiety and depression had to do with getting a bad grade, dealing with uncertainty, and feeling inferior to my peers. I did end up seeing a counselor when I had a depression flare-up that got really bad, but I really figured out how to accept negative feelings and not let them consume me. I also brought some eating disorder behaviors into college with me, and I had to learn how to manage stress without over-exercising, binging, and restricting.
I agree that the wording was strange… But OP those are very real concerns.
I was fine all throughout high school and most of my freshman year- I had 2 breakdowns which I relate to stress as both happened during finals week - but midway through this year I began experiencing panic attacks and an overwhelming feeling of being sad
I think part of being healthy includes knowing when to get help as well as knowing familial history. I addressed my issues quickly because I know that depression and anxiety both run in my family. So starting sometime in February I began seeing a school therapist once a week- she made it clear that she wasn’t going to push meds onto me but if she did see something of concern there was a psychiatrist on campus as well.
And this was anxiety I had never experienced. I was getting driving anxiety (I still get anxious driving over the tapanzee bridge, despite the fact that I drove it all summer and have been driving for 3 years) to anxiety relating to having people behind me- but I am able to recognize those because I sought out help .
I think that part of being mentally healthy in college is knowing when you need help, where to go and that there’s nothing wrong with needing help.
If you don’t understand the material, ask for help right then and there. Otherwise you get so far behind it feels you can never catch up. There is no shame in asking for help. I see this as being a big issue for students who never had an issue in high school and then struggle in college.
During the tours of colleges with my daughters, each college discussed what tutoring and additional help was available for students and where it was located.
By saying that incoming college students should be comfortable managing emotional upheavals, I think that this counselor means that young adults should have some knowledge about how to, or experience with, dealing with extreme emotions on their end and how to resolve those feelings - in whatever way works for them. I think part of the battle is preparing young adults for the possibility that there might be emotional upheavals to deal with, and that everything won’t be smooth sailing all the time. Secondly, it’s about equipping them with the knowledge of how they best deal with adversity and letting them know the resources that exist for that. For some students asking for help and speaking to counselors might be necessary; others might need to go home for a weekend to regroup; others might need a lot of hobbies and social distractions to cope with schoolwork.
Looks like a pretty good list to me. I read manage emotional upheavals to mean that the kids have had experiences with stressers in life (disappointments, competitions, relationships) and have been able to healthily overcome those situations…pretty “normal” stuff for late teen years.