Thursday, December 9, 2010

Grape Interview About Mental Health at Oberlin

“Oberlin, to me, is about stress,” a former psychologist of mine from the counseling center once told me. No one has since expressed this basic fact to me as plainly. As Oberlin heads into finals, Oberlin is certainly defined by stress more than anything, yet this stress is only discussed indirectly—most recent conversations I’ve had revolve around grueling workloads, but the insane amount of stress everyone experiences is accepted as a given. Mental health issues such as anxiety and depression are largely normalized as part of the college experience.

In fact, mental health issues on campus have increased and may recently have literally reached crisis levels. According to Harvard clinician Richard Kadison,in his 2004 book College of the Overwhelmed: The Campus Mental Health Crisis and What to Do About It, there has been a "mental health crisis" on college campuses since the late ‘80s. "Since 1988, the likelihood of a college student suffering depression has doubled, suicidal ideation has tripled, and sexual assaults have quadrupled," he writes. “It is the elephant in the room that no one it talking about.”

Oberlin, as a small campus, may be particular susceptible to this mental health crisis. Charlie Ross, the director of the Oberlin counseling center, said that last year the center, “saw 640 students, which is about 22 percent (of the student population). Compared to the schools like us, like Mt. Holyoke, Wesleyan, Amherst, it’s a pretty similar number. Nationally, it’s 11 percent”

“We do have an increase in urgency that students express in getting counseling.” Ross said. “We have what’s called a crisis walk-in everyday. And it used to be that we would have one person or maybe nobody waiting for an appointment. But it turned out that two or three years ago we would have six or eight people come to a walk-in. So it drastically in a year it changed from none to maybe two people to maybe six or eight people.”

Fortunately, Active Minds, a nationwide organization that is devoted to changing “the conversation about mental health on college campuses,” has established a chapter at Oberlin that can help provoke discussion of these kind of issues. I interviewed Oberlin Active Minds member Jamie Flynn about Active Minds, stress, and how we talk about mental health on campus.


Can you give a description of Active Minds?

Active Minds at Oberlin is a chapter of a nationwide organization founded by Alison Malmon after her brother committed suicide as a way to promote an open dialogue about mental health issues on college campuses. Her main goal in doing this, and our mission, was to educate the public and advertise mental health resources so that people can get help before they end up in crisis.

As an Oberlin College student organization, we work to remove stigma from the people who live with (mental health issues), and the discussion surrounding mental disorders through education and programming. As a local chapter, we are working with the student voice to promote healthy changes in the dialogue about mental health on Oberlin campus. If you can’t talk about how to be mentally healthy, how will anyone be able to discuss living with mental illness? Also, we're a fun group. Everyone should come check us out.

How would you describe the stress/mental health situation at Oberlin?

"Stress" is a ubiquitous state of mind that peaks during finals. I don't think that I have met a single person at Oberlin during the academic school year that has not experienced an alarming degree of stress at some point or another. That is where the mental health component of Oberlin's resources come in. Since I began as a first-year, organizations like the counseling center and the center for leadership in health promotion have tried to introduce programming to help students reduce their stress like massages and puppy therapy to name two. While definitely an improvement, I feel that these programs have also encouraged students to think of stress-reducing measures as time-consuming and out-of-the-way.

Furthermore, I think that the mentality surrounding stress is something like "if you don't have a lot of it, you're not doing it (Oberlin/school) right." In reality, simple steps like making sure you get enough sleep, eating right, and time management are the best ways to reduce stress and maintain healthy mental states. I do not think people talk about these things for fear of sounding "boring" or "lame." Who wants to sleep at 1 AM when there's a party on campus or a paper due?

What do you think causes stress at Oberlin? Overwork, social issues, other causes?

I think expectations cause stress at Oberlin. Expectations of a movie-typical college lifestyle that Oberlin's campus may not actually support, expectations of academic excellence, expectations of social excellence, etc. all seem to contribute to stress at Oberlin, and they all seem to be built into its very image. I think Oberlin has a body image problem much like a person with an eating disorder. So yes, all of those things mentioned do cause stress, but only as they are interpreted by each individual in accordance with their expectations.

How would you assess the mental health facilities and programs at Oberlin? Maybe include something along the lines of what you were saying on how they need to integrate into the community more.

I think that the mental health facilities available to Oberlin students are adequate, but operating under their potential. Most of the wellness-centered organizations on campus are incommunicado, at least to each other. To try and rectify this, the college has done some re-organization to introduce a dialogue between the counseling center and the physical education staff in Phillips, for example. It's really very exciting because we are working towards a time when a student can receive coordinated and comprehensive relief from multiple sources on campus that already exist.

What do you think are some possible solutions are to stress/mental health issues on campus?

I think the only real solution is to change peoples' perspectives on things like sleeping and eating. Most (I would venture to say) would put work and other activities before sleep and nutrition when the fact of the matter is that those two mundane activities will make students more attentive in class and efficient in homework performace. However, to begin that revolution the campus needs to be able to openly discuss what it means to be mentally healthy as well as unhealthy. An open and equal conversation about mental health, good and bad, is the only way for Oberlin to encourage students to prepare themselves for a healthy as well as academically and/or fiscally successful life.

Active Minds, as an organization, is trying to promote programming and increase the educational resources on campus having to do with living with mental illness and living a mentally healthy lifestyle. Our resource panel, an event that gathered the many wellness resources on campus into one room to give student a better idea of what is available on campus, was hugely successful and is being sponsored by OBFit this year.