Survey Finds Depression Pervasive in College
Published On Monday, March 31, 2003 12:00 AM
By EBONIE D. HAZLE
Crimson Staff Writer
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Nearly half of the Harvard College student body felt depressed during the last academic year and almost 10 percent of undergraduates reported that they had considered suicide, according to the results of a survey released by University Health Services (UHS) earlier this month.
The survey results reveal a startling number of undergraduates battling depression at Harvard and cite stress and lack of sleep as the leading factors affecting students’ academic performances.
And, more alarming to College administrators, most students are not reaching out for help.
“The biggest problem the University faces is finding ways to reduce the stigma of depression so people will come in for care,” UHS Director of Mental Health Services Richard D. Kadison wrote in an e-mail.
According to the results, less than half of those students diagnosed with depression are currently in therapy, though the figure is up from the 32.4 percent who said two years ago they were seeking counseling.
The survey, completed by roughly 14 percent of undergraduates enrolled during the 2001-2002 academic year, also found a high number of incidents of sexual assault on campus. Nearly 10 percent of Harvard undergraduates were involved in sexual touching against their will during the last year, according to the survey results, and about one percent of students reported involuntary sexual penetration.
UHS randomly sampled 2,500 of the 6,650 of the Harvard undergraduates enrolled during the 2001-2002 academic year, and 930 surveys were returned, for a roughly 37.2 percent response rate.
The health survey was only the second attempt to track Harvard students’ health behavior and attitudes since an initiative in 2000 where UHS partnered with the American College Health Association to investigate the health of students at Harvard and to compare those findings to national statistics. Prior to that joint effort, there was virtually no data about adolescent health available that was specific to college students.
College of the ‘Overwhelmed’
The UHS survey results reflect a stressed student body.
According to the results, 47.4 percent of students at the College reported feeling depressed at least once during the past academic year, and about a third say they’ve felt overwhelmed 11 or more times—the highest category choice.
Almost ten percent of students said that they had been clinically diagnosed with depression, and more than half of those students said that diagnosis came within the last year. In 2000, only a third of students who said they were clinically depressed said they had been diagnosed in the past year.
And 1.1 percent of those surveyed—roughly nine students—reported that they had attempted suicide in the last year.
Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 said that he thinks the demanding work ethic and the high stress level of some students may be partly to blame for Harvard students’ poor mental health.
“Certainly I am not surprised by the generally high levels of reported stress and depression…I do think that students expect too much of themselves and sometimes take too much on,” he wrote in an email.
The survey statistics support Lewis’ hypothesis.
Thirty-three percent of students reported feeling exhausted—for reasons other than physical activity—11 or more times in the past school year.
A significant portion of students are also not getting the exercise they need; twenty-two percent of those surveyed reported no vigorous or moderate exercise in the previous week.
And when asked whether any of 24 factors had affected their academic performance within the last school year, stress and sleep issues made up more than half of undergraduates’ citations.
Despite concerns that students are not seeking help, UHS has seen an overall increase in the number of students receiving treatment for depression and other mental health problems over the past three years.
“We’ve had a significant increase in our staffing to meet the demand, but the demand has grown as quickly as the new staffing, which I see as a good sign,” Kadison wrote.
Kadison said that he thinks that the increased presence of peer counseling groups is one reason for the increase.
“Students are more likely to listen to their peers and these groups are helping students to get information and learn about resources,” he wrote.
Rise in Sexual Assault
There was a statistically significant rise in reported incidents of sexual assault on campus last year. The percentage of students who were involved in sexual touching against their will increased to 9.7 percent last year, up from the 7.6 percent who reported being victims of such acts in 2000.
Moreover, 0.9 percent—1.3 of female respondents and 0.3 percent of male respondents—reported actual sexual penetration against their will. Though lower than the national average, which was 1.8 percent in 2000, that figure still means that at least nine out of the 930 students on campus who completed this survey said they had been raped over the course of the previous year.
Students’ perceived access to information about sexual assault has increased markedly in the last two years. In the most recent survey, 82 percent reported receiving information on sexual assault and rape, more than any other health-related topic and a ten percent increase from 2000.
These statistics come nearly a year after the Faculty’s controversial vote to require corroborating evidence before the College’s Administrative Board investigates peer-to-peer disputes—including claims of sexual assault.
The backlash to that policy change led to the formation of a committee to review and make recommendations on Harvard’s support services for victims of sexual violence and on preventive, educational and outreach programs to reduce the incidence of sexual violence in the College.
That committee was the third in a one-year span formed to examine the way that Harvard deals with sexual assault.
Everybody’s Doing It
Questions about students’ sexual habits revealed that Harvard students are less sexually active than their peers at other institutions, though that is definitely not the perception of students on campus.
According to the survey, 49.3 percent Harvard students have never had vaginal sex. But Harvard undergraduates have a much higher estimate of the amount of sex their fellow students are having.
For example, 61.4 percent of Harvard students said they believed the typical Harvard student had had vaginal sex with 2 or more partners over the course of the last year. But only 22.8 percent of students reported having vaginal sex with
that number of partners. In fact, 41.8 percent of the survey respondents said that they had not had vaginal sex with any partner during the previous year.
But those Harvard students who are engaging in sexual activity are much more likely to use some form of contraception than the typical American college student. Roughly 60 percent of those students who had engaged in vaginal intercourse reported mostly or always using a condom. That’s up three percent from 2000 and significantly higher than the national average, which in recent years has been about 45 percent.
Kadison, however, says that level of contraception use is still below where it should be.
Another interesting finding of the survey is that Harvard students are roughly twice as likely as their peers to use emergency contraception. Use of the morning after pill up to 14.2 percent this year from 13 percent in 2000. The national average in 2000 was just 6.7 percent.
Other Interesting Findings
The survey had several other important findings not directly related to sexual health.
For instance, 40.4 percent (23 percent men and 54 percent of women) reported that they were actively trying to lose weight.
UHS has also seen an increase in students seeking treatment for acute alcohol intoxication. “There have been at least two incidents that might have led to the death of a student if they hadn’t been brought in when they were,” Kadison wrote. Furthermore, 9.8 percent of students reported having unprotected sex as a result of drinking, which was a large jump from the 7 percent who reported such actions in the 2000 survey.
—Staff writer Ebonie D. Hazle can be reached at hazle@fas.harvard.edu.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=347255
Showing posts with label Suicide. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Suicide. Show all posts
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Colleges target mental health
Campus groups, courses, online services help reduce the stigma of treatment
By Gary Gately, Globe Correspondent | April 17, 2005
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, trained students staff an all-night hot line that fellow students call to talk about everything from stress to suicidal depression. When Harvard University offered free iPods at a depression screening, about 800 students showed up to fill out mental health surveys. Brandeis University students recently gathered for a movie night focusing on depression on campus. One film's title: ''The Truth About Suicide: Real Stories of Depression in College."
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Sign up for: Globe Headlines e-mail | Breaking News Alerts In the Boston area and throughout the country, colleges have expanded efforts to educate students about mental illness and provide treatment. Many schools have increased staffing at counseling centers. Others have developed courses on dealing with stress, added depression screening days, offered students online help, and undertaken an array of efforts to reduce the stigma associated with mental illness.
Highly publicized campus suicides and research showing an alarming prevalence of mental illness on campuses have heightened the sense of urgency. The reality of rampant mental illness on campus shatters the notion of college as a carefree time when the biggest worries are passing finals and finding a date. For many students, dark shadows shroud the sheltered nest of academe.
More than 40 percent of US students become so depressed during their four years in college that they have trouble functioning, while 15 percent suffer clinical depression, according to a 2004 survey of 47,202 students by the American College Health Association. The annual survey found that 1 in 10 college students had seriously considered suicide, the second-leading cause of death among college students, claiming about 1,100 lives a year.
Richard Kadison, Harvard's chief of mental health services, offers a sobering reality check to parents of incoming students: ''I tell them, 'Look at the person next to you. One of your kids is going to get depressed to the point they can't function in college. There's no shame in that. The only shame is if you don't recognize the problem and do something about it.' "
Specialists have long known that the onset of mental illness often comes during adolescence or early adulthood. Living away from home, often for the first time, compounds stress and anxiety. So, too, does pressure to succeed in an increasingly competitive climate on campus.
Because of the use of antidepressants, many youngsters who wouldn't have been able to attend college in the past now do so. That forces schools to deal with more students struggling with more severe mental illness.
Despite the pervasiveness of mental illness on campus, specialists say, one of the toughest challenges remains overcoming stigmas that keep students from seeking treatment. In fact, more than a third of college students who committed suicide had never sought treatment, said Kadison, co-author of ''College of the Overwhelmed: The Campus Mental Health Crisis and What to Do About It.
''The most frustrating thing for most of us in the field is trying to get students in the door; that's the hard part," Kadison said. ''When a student is in distress, you have a brief window of opportunity to help them."
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Sign up for: Globe Headlines e-mail | Breaking News Alerts Brian Malmon was a student who suffered in silence. At Columbia University, he made the dean's list every semester, wrote and edited for the campus newspaper, and led an a cappella singing group. Friends and relatives remember that others leaned on him when they struggled. He comforted people. He made people laugh.
During his three years at Columbia, nobody knew about the voices that existed only in his mind or about the darkness that enveloped him. He hid his schizophrenia and depression well before he was diagnosed in the fall of his senior year. Then, on March 24, 2000, at his family's home in Maryland, he squeezed the trigger of a handgun and ended his life.
Since then, his sister, Alison Malmon, has made it her mission to help spare others the horrific pain her brother and all those who loved him suffered. Malmon, a 23-year-old graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, founded the nonprofit Active Minds on Campus, which aims to build awareness about mental illness on campus and reduce the stigma associated with it. A fledgling chapter has started at Brandeis in Waltham.
''Brian was just trying his hardest to hide his illness from as many people as he could," she said. ''I think part of him just felt like it was his fault."
Active Minds works hard to dispel such misconceptions. The group reaches students through its chapters and a website, ActiveMindsOnCampus.org, which includes mental health screening and links to other sites to help those with mental illness.
For its mental health movie night, members of the Brandeis chapter covered the walls of a room on campus with facts about mental illness and quotes from famous people who suffered depression. The group also set up tables on campus and passed out silver ribbons, a symbol of mental illness.
Michelle Schlesinger, the Brandeis freshman who started the chapter, has suffered depression, and she said eliminating the stigma will ease the suffering of others. ''When one person starts talking and breaks the silence," she said, ''it breaks the stigma. And people start to realize anyone can have depression."
Like Active Minds, the Jed Foundation strives to strengthen the safety net for at-risk students. The foundation, the first nonprofit group dedicated solely to reducing suicide on college campuses, grew out of a family's painful loss: Jed Satow, a University of Arizona student, killed himself in 1998 at the age of 20.
Colleges nationwide have tried to help troubled students before they're in crisis.
Harvard hired more therapists within the past five years, and this school year added a new high-level position to oversee and better coordinate disparate mental health services the university had termed fragmented ''fiefdoms."
At MIT, teams of physicians and counselors hang out with students in the dorms. And some of the dorms have been redesigned to foster more interaction and less isolation. ''Having staff available and present goes a long way toward demystifying the whole idea of mental health and psychological problems," said Alan E. Siegel, chief of the Mental Health Service at MIT.
Columbia, Cornell, and New York University station counselors in dorms. Harvard sends to dorms ''wellness-resource tutors" who help students deal with issues from procrastination and stress to depression. Some schools, including MIT, offer stress-reduction and relaxation techniques such as yoga, meditation, and tai chi.
Emory University, the University of North Carolina, and MIT ask students to fill out anonymous mental health questionnaires. A credited course at the University of Maryland helps freshmen deal with stress and time management. Now about two-thirds of the nation's schools offer such courses.
At Tufts University, Jonathan Slavin, director of the counseling center, said the campus has reduced the stigma associated with mental illness to the point that 750 of 6,000 undergraduates have received counseling. ''If you can make a counseling service commonplace and ordinary, and students can just drop by," he said, ''that is the best prevention. That means you made the place something other than this kind of scary, mysterious place you got to be crazy to go to."
But despite progress, specialists say, huge gaps in treatment on campuses remain.
Such concerns have spread from campuses to Capitol Hill. Lawmakers approved $82 million in federal funding last fall for programs to prevent youth suicide, including $15 million in grants for mental health programs at colleges and universities.
© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2005/04/17/colleges_target_mental_health/?page=2
Campus groups, courses, online services help reduce the stigma of treatment
By Gary Gately, Globe Correspondent | April 17, 2005
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, trained students staff an all-night hot line that fellow students call to talk about everything from stress to suicidal depression. When Harvard University offered free iPods at a depression screening, about 800 students showed up to fill out mental health surveys. Brandeis University students recently gathered for a movie night focusing on depression on campus. One film's title: ''The Truth About Suicide: Real Stories of Depression in College."
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powered by Del.icio.us
More:
Globe Education stories |
Education section |
Globe front page |
Boston.com
Sign up for: Globe Headlines e-mail | Breaking News Alerts In the Boston area and throughout the country, colleges have expanded efforts to educate students about mental illness and provide treatment. Many schools have increased staffing at counseling centers. Others have developed courses on dealing with stress, added depression screening days, offered students online help, and undertaken an array of efforts to reduce the stigma associated with mental illness.
Highly publicized campus suicides and research showing an alarming prevalence of mental illness on campuses have heightened the sense of urgency. The reality of rampant mental illness on campus shatters the notion of college as a carefree time when the biggest worries are passing finals and finding a date. For many students, dark shadows shroud the sheltered nest of academe.
More than 40 percent of US students become so depressed during their four years in college that they have trouble functioning, while 15 percent suffer clinical depression, according to a 2004 survey of 47,202 students by the American College Health Association. The annual survey found that 1 in 10 college students had seriously considered suicide, the second-leading cause of death among college students, claiming about 1,100 lives a year.
Richard Kadison, Harvard's chief of mental health services, offers a sobering reality check to parents of incoming students: ''I tell them, 'Look at the person next to you. One of your kids is going to get depressed to the point they can't function in college. There's no shame in that. The only shame is if you don't recognize the problem and do something about it.' "
Specialists have long known that the onset of mental illness often comes during adolescence or early adulthood. Living away from home, often for the first time, compounds stress and anxiety. So, too, does pressure to succeed in an increasingly competitive climate on campus.
Because of the use of antidepressants, many youngsters who wouldn't have been able to attend college in the past now do so. That forces schools to deal with more students struggling with more severe mental illness.
Despite the pervasiveness of mental illness on campus, specialists say, one of the toughest challenges remains overcoming stigmas that keep students from seeking treatment. In fact, more than a third of college students who committed suicide had never sought treatment, said Kadison, co-author of ''College of the Overwhelmed: The Campus Mental Health Crisis and What to Do About It.
''The most frustrating thing for most of us in the field is trying to get students in the door; that's the hard part," Kadison said. ''When a student is in distress, you have a brief window of opportunity to help them."
Article Tools
Printer friendly
Single page
E-mail to a friend
Education RSS feed
Available RSS feeds
Most e-mailed
Reprints & Licensing
Save this article
powered by Del.icio.us
More:
Globe Education stories |
Education section |
Globe front page |
Boston.com
Sign up for: Globe Headlines e-mail | Breaking News Alerts Brian Malmon was a student who suffered in silence. At Columbia University, he made the dean's list every semester, wrote and edited for the campus newspaper, and led an a cappella singing group. Friends and relatives remember that others leaned on him when they struggled. He comforted people. He made people laugh.
During his three years at Columbia, nobody knew about the voices that existed only in his mind or about the darkness that enveloped him. He hid his schizophrenia and depression well before he was diagnosed in the fall of his senior year. Then, on March 24, 2000, at his family's home in Maryland, he squeezed the trigger of a handgun and ended his life.
Since then, his sister, Alison Malmon, has made it her mission to help spare others the horrific pain her brother and all those who loved him suffered. Malmon, a 23-year-old graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, founded the nonprofit Active Minds on Campus, which aims to build awareness about mental illness on campus and reduce the stigma associated with it. A fledgling chapter has started at Brandeis in Waltham.
''Brian was just trying his hardest to hide his illness from as many people as he could," she said. ''I think part of him just felt like it was his fault."
Active Minds works hard to dispel such misconceptions. The group reaches students through its chapters and a website, ActiveMindsOnCampus.org, which includes mental health screening and links to other sites to help those with mental illness.
For its mental health movie night, members of the Brandeis chapter covered the walls of a room on campus with facts about mental illness and quotes from famous people who suffered depression. The group also set up tables on campus and passed out silver ribbons, a symbol of mental illness.
Michelle Schlesinger, the Brandeis freshman who started the chapter, has suffered depression, and she said eliminating the stigma will ease the suffering of others. ''When one person starts talking and breaks the silence," she said, ''it breaks the stigma. And people start to realize anyone can have depression."
Like Active Minds, the Jed Foundation strives to strengthen the safety net for at-risk students. The foundation, the first nonprofit group dedicated solely to reducing suicide on college campuses, grew out of a family's painful loss: Jed Satow, a University of Arizona student, killed himself in 1998 at the age of 20.
Colleges nationwide have tried to help troubled students before they're in crisis.
Harvard hired more therapists within the past five years, and this school year added a new high-level position to oversee and better coordinate disparate mental health services the university had termed fragmented ''fiefdoms."
At MIT, teams of physicians and counselors hang out with students in the dorms. And some of the dorms have been redesigned to foster more interaction and less isolation. ''Having staff available and present goes a long way toward demystifying the whole idea of mental health and psychological problems," said Alan E. Siegel, chief of the Mental Health Service at MIT.
Columbia, Cornell, and New York University station counselors in dorms. Harvard sends to dorms ''wellness-resource tutors" who help students deal with issues from procrastination and stress to depression. Some schools, including MIT, offer stress-reduction and relaxation techniques such as yoga, meditation, and tai chi.
Emory University, the University of North Carolina, and MIT ask students to fill out anonymous mental health questionnaires. A credited course at the University of Maryland helps freshmen deal with stress and time management. Now about two-thirds of the nation's schools offer such courses.
At Tufts University, Jonathan Slavin, director of the counseling center, said the campus has reduced the stigma associated with mental illness to the point that 750 of 6,000 undergraduates have received counseling. ''If you can make a counseling service commonplace and ordinary, and students can just drop by," he said, ''that is the best prevention. That means you made the place something other than this kind of scary, mysterious place you got to be crazy to go to."
But despite progress, specialists say, huge gaps in treatment on campuses remain.
Such concerns have spread from campuses to Capitol Hill. Lawmakers approved $82 million in federal funding last fall for programs to prevent youth suicide, including $15 million in grants for mental health programs at colleges and universities.
© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2005/04/17/colleges_target_mental_health/?page=2
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