Camille Valentine
Professor Fino-Murtaugh
Eng 160-29
Nov 18, 2022
Covid-19 wasn’t the Only Pandemic Brewing
While 2020 wasn’t the greatest year with the spread of Covid going global, along with other events such as the death of Kobe Bryant, the stock market crash, the unreasonable death of black americans, murder hornets, explosions, wild fires, and so many more that made that year a living hell. To make matters worse there was another less talked about crisis coming from the wings, the mental health crisis was expanding and affecting thousands. Isolation made the world go deranged making mental illness numbers reach their peak. As time went on it only got worse, in 2021 most people couldn’t take the guidelines and isolation and they only saw one way out, an article posted by the CDC states that suicide rates increased by 50,000, or statistically, 4%; the highest rate ever increase in suicide, especially amoung young men ages 15-24, prime college age (“Suicide Data and Statistics | Suicide”).
Mental illness among young adults and college students has become a global pandemic in itself across the globe. In an PubMed article, a government website, written in 2007 it states, “About 14% of the global burden of disease has been attributed to neuropsychiatric disorders, mostly due to the chronically disabling nature of mental disorders,”… (Prince). This article was written over a decade ago and mental health cases have only increased since then so just imagine the percentage now; after a global pandemic and years of stress building up from classes, teachers, and parents. This pandemic is turning into a crisis and the most at risk are young adults, aka, college students. The mental health crisis isn’t even being acknowledged let alone supported, making it more stressful for people suffering. Yes there is help out there, some campuses have plans and programs in place to help students for free, but what about the hundreds of colleges that don’t have that, this is a global crisis and it is just starting to catch wind?
I believe the worst part of this whole situation is the government and those in power know of this crisis and all they do is put up commercials and ads about how “We are all in this together” stated by the CDC and the Ad Council everytime we turn on our TVs. Yes we are, but people are actually suffering and surcoming to suicide because they aren’t getting the help they need. It isn’t that they don’t want to, it is because of expenses, we are in college we have barely enough money to feed ourselves. And to make it worse the age group most at risk for suicide and suicidal thoughts are college students; our future politicians, scientists, teachers, artists, and so many more that we will all need some day. But since they can’t get the help they need now, how will we survive throughout the next generation?
I am lucky enough to go to I am in a college that has free medical care that comes with our tuition, but that should be a basic policy for all colleges. With all the money we are paying I think they Yes some say that the option for free medical services on campus are too expensive and will just raise tuition rates, but that’s not the case, I go to a State University, one of the cheaper of the options when it comes to colleges and even they can put aside money and funds for us to have free access for our medical needs may it be physical or mental. Even a simple google search like seen in Figure one will show you that New Paltz has done a lot in the aspect of mental health services on campus and online. Everything from telehealth to open door policy for anyone who needs to talk to someone (SUNY New Paltz). Colleges all around the state, country, and world should and can afford at least twoone therapiststherapist for students., even a psychiatrist . We the students are suffering and struggling to survive due to our own minds and everyone, the older generations, just sits back and lets it happen, especially the older generations.
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Acknowledging what is happening is the first step but even that isn’t happening, hundreds and thousands of colleges watch as their students take their own lives. “Acknowledging the antecedents of the current student mental-health landscape does not diminish the seriousness of the current problem. If anything, it adds a further note of pessimism: Experts have been trying to confront student anxiety for over half a century without reversing the tide” (Stearns). It can only get worse from here if this problem isn’t solved but at this point it isn’t even being noticed or talked about. And you could argue there are things out there like hotlines and programs but I didn’t even find out about them until I did my research and people in crisis, especially students wont go to google and look up a place near them to help. They should know what’s out there already, there should be signs, buildborders, flyers, it should be in the orientation, not hidden like it’s some shameful thing.
Covid made the whole I talked about subject that much worse. There is actually a Covid hotline, not for questions about corona virus, but a suicide/mental health hotline dedicated for people who were suffering from the pandemic and isolation, which by the way here is the hotline: 1-888-364-3065. Which doesn’t help much when the link underneath the hotline is a direct website to information on Covid-19. Because of course when you’re in a mental crisis while in isolation the one thing you need to know is if you have symptoms of Coronavirus. Also lets go back to the commercials, even the CDC, the government, knew of the mental health crisis during covid and then as soon as the pandemic let up its as if it never happened, because to the world covid was the pandemic, but there was two pandemics at the same time all along.
Topics
-How to solve it just by acknowledging it
Is it a real issue?
Is the government/community really caring/doing anything to help?
$$$$$?
Links(Articles)
–Suicide rate highest among teens and young adults | UCLA Health Connect
–mental health new paltz – Yahoo Search Results
–Mental Health of College Students Is Getting Worse | The Brink | Boston University (bu.edu)
–Suicide Data and Statistics | Suicide | CDC
Commercials during pandemic about mental health
COVID-19 Hotline
Call the Hotline: 1-888-364-3065
Mental Health Support
Works Cited
Cohen, Sandy. “Suicide rate highest among teens and young adults.” UCLA Health Connect, 15 March 2022, https://connect.uclahealth.org/2022/03/15/suicide-rate-highest-among-teens-and-young-adults/#. Accessed 7 November 2022.
Colarossi, Jessica. “Mental Health of College Students Is Getting Worse.” Boston University, 21 April 2022, https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/mental-health-of-college-students-is-getting-worse/. Accessed 7 November 2022.
Ebert, David daniel. “Barriers of Mental Health Treatment Utilization among First-year College Students: First Cross-national Results from the WHO World Mental Health International College Student Initiative.” International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research, vol. 28, no. 2, 2019, pp. 1-14. EBSCOhost, https://libdatabase.newpaltz.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=136466401&site=ehost-live.
Prince, Martin. “No health without mental health.” PubMed, 8 September 2007, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17804063/. Accessed 11 November 2022.
Stearns, Peter N. A ‘Crisis’ of Student Anxiety?: The Challenges to Student Mental Health are Real. they are also Decades in the Making. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2022. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/docview/2725162857/5A1D1FBFB0194E9EPQ/3?parentSessionId=pE8n3x1RvmMEqsYucPdOyIvNTS9br1iVqiyQK1vDQuU%3D.
“Suicide Data and Statistics | Suicide.” CDC, 28 June 2022, https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/suicide-data-statistics.html. Accessed 11 November 2022.