<p>florilegium: Listen to runnersmom. I have only three things to add. </p>
<p>(1) It may be easier for your friend to talk to her Resident Head rather than call counseling herself. She should do that as soon as she can; he or she will know how to make things happen. </p>
<p>(2) You seem very engaged in this. That’s really commendable – you are a good friend – but if your friend is really having some sort of mental health crisis, what you can do is very, very limited – whether from a distance, or on a visit, or even if you move into her dorm room and brush her teeth for her. Get her to talk to some adults and to go to the counseling center, get her to talk to her parents about this, and go live your life. That’s another lesson that I learned the hard way, through experience. </p>
<p>(3) Before you push the panic button completely, however, think for a moment whether the proper DSM classification for your friend’s condition is “Freshman Winter”. As unalove suggested, it can really suck. I was thinking last night – I had the most wonderful undergraduate experience imaginable, in my mind everything was perfect, but if I focus on late January, freshman year, I was (a) tired of my roommates, (b) disappointed with what I had been learning, (c) hating the one EC I was involved in, (d) getting drunk daily, (e) feeling like I didn’t really know anyone I had met since school began, and (f) really down on myself for frequently slipping back into a relationship I had supposedly ended more than a year before. I was just beginning to get a glimmer of the academic passion that dominated my college career, and I had met but barely formed a relationship with three or four of my closest college friends. By March, things were a lot better; by the following September they were a LOT better, and I began to forget that the bad 5-7 weeks had ever happened.</p>
<p>This shouldn’t deter your friend from talking to a counselor, but maybe it should give her hope that a lot of people go through something like this right about now, and it’s barely a speedbump on their roads.</p>