Homesickness can be a real illness

College Life
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<p>"Homesickness really is an illness, doctors say
Particularly intense form can interfere with normal activities</p>

<p>AP-DETROIT - Janise Stone spent her first semester in college dreaming of home ? literally.</p>

<p>Stone, 18, would get up in the morning and grudgingly attend classes at Paine College in Augusta, Ga. But the minute she returned to her dormitory, she curled up and thought of family in Indianapolis as she slept the day away.</p>

<p>?I was so depressed,? Stone said while at home for holidays. “I just kept thinking that if I slept through it, I’d eventually get back home.”</p>

<p>She isn’t alone.</p>

<p>Almost everyone experiences occasional homesickness, but many young people suffer from a particularly intense form that interferes with normal activities, according to a new study by the American Academy of Pediatrics.</p>

<p>The report in the January issue of the journal Pediatrics offers tips to physicians for recognizing risk factors among patients who are leaving home for the first time…</p>

<p>About 95 percent of young people say they miss something about home the first time they are away, Thurber said. Most of them simply miss their Xbox or their mother’s cooking.</p>

<p>But a smaller percentage, about 1 in 14, suffer from what Thurber calls “intense homesickness.”</p>

<p>“They’re not eating or sleeping right, not playing with others,” said Thurber. “Or they have an intense preoccupation with home, they’re not thinking about anything else.”</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16437570/[/url]”>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16437570/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Is there also such a condition as “post high school depression”? I know I have it really bad–the only cure for me seems to be to visit my high school, which I have done more than any other alum since graduation.</p>

<p>I was sort of a “slash” guy over there–both a faculty member (computer tech) and student. I was at the school almost every weekday of the year, including the summer. I had seven straight years (grades 6-12) of perfect attendance. The faculty and I know each other on a first name basis, and I was pretty popular among the students as well. Even on the days at the end of senior year when seniors weren’t supposed to be there I drove in anyway, finding some work in the TV studio and roaming the hallways with the underclassmen before their finals.</p>

<p>Since leaving the school, I have been called on for many projects. However, being that I no longer am there on a full time basis, I have suffered greatly since. Sure, I live in the same house, but I think it’s the people (both students and faculty) who I long to be with every day again.</p>

<p>I have had increased difficulty falling asleep since starting college a year and a half ago. It seems especially tough on two types of days–the night before I get to visit my alma mater again and the night after a visit. One is full of excitement and the other full of sadness because I realize the happiness I got there is no longer a permanent thing.</p>

<p>I’m an ed major and want to at least finish my career at my alma mater. They have a history of hiring their own (I had several graduates of the school as teachers) so I’m keeping my hopes up there.</p>

<p>But is post-high school depression a real condition and should I be concerned about this?</p>

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<p>I think your high school is just a home away from home for you. I wish I liked my high school that much =P lol. I am sure that if you do decide to work there, you will be really happy. You shouldn’t be concerned, but realize that there are more things to life than just that high school.</p>

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<p>Nobody I know gets homesick. That girl was an idiot.</p>

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<p>I think you’re right on the “home away from home” theory. There were many days I didn’t ever want to leave for my actual home. My home life wasn’t the greatest during my high school years (poor father figure had just left, mother now overworked and stressed all the time) and I had a “family” of sorts in the high school (a “mom”, a “dad”, a “big brother”, a “crazy uncle”, a bunch of “cousins”, and three “little sisters”) so that sort of offset any trouble from home.</p>

<p>Good to know I shouldn’t be concerned!</p>

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<p>Deluxe, how do you know that no one has homesickness, that everyone loves every minute of every day they are in college and wouldn’t trade it for the world? I am by no means feeling this “intense homesickness”, but there have been times in these first 4 months of college where I missed home. When I’m at school, I miss going into a bathroom that is always clean and always private. I don’t have a car at school, so I miss driving and being able to go places whenever I want. I miss being able to sleep with the tv and talk on the phone in the wee hours of the morning. Maybe your home life doesn’t have perks like that, but most people miss these types of things, as well as family and friends who stayed local for school. Just because your friends don’t tell you that there are times when they miss home, that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.</p>

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<p>I know how that feels because I had that for awhile when I moved away from my hometown for a bit. I cried all day and was just genuinely depressed.</p>

<p>After I got back to my hometown, I sort of forgot about missing home (my hometown wasn’t exactly my home because my parents moved elsewhere further away)</p>

<p>The only time I genuinly miss ‘home’ is when the break is near or everybody’s gone and you are stuck by yourself at school. That is just depressing.</p>

<p>I don’t think i can get through the year if I miss home all the time… Especially because my house is in a different country, even further away. I guess it helps not to thinka bout it so much anyhow, just occupy yourself with other stuff</p>

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<p>i think i had mild homesickness at the beginning of the semester…i honestly felt like maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to go off to a university yet. i’d call friends at home a lot, and i didn’t mind that my parents called almost every day (haha). mostly, i think it was just because it was so hard to make friends at first. but as i started to make more friends and i started to hang out more, home became more and more of an afterthought.</p>

<p>i live about an hour away from school, so i went home maybe every other week for the first two months, then i realized more and more that i’m missing out on things at school and was dying to get back into it. i eventually learned to do my own laundry (:p) and would go weeks, almost months, at a time without going home. so i think the thing that ended homesickness for me was just keeping myself busy with work and friends. as i got more comfortable, i spent less of my freetime in my dorm watching TV or playing computer games, and instead went to friends’ dorms (if it was a weekday), or go to a concert or party if it was a weekend. </p>

<p>to put it in short…at this moment, i’m not sure where i’d rather be anymore…school (and independence) is amazing and full of more rewarding experiences than home ever was, but on the same token there’s no substitute for home.</p>