College Students and Mental Health

My first year of college brought changes in my mental state, unfortunately, more negative than positive. “Mental health of college students” is a topic I want to write about because I never understood it until experiencing it myself. College students may find difficulty opening up their emotions as they may be considered weak. I want to raise more awareness as I feel not many find importance on this topic, and for colleges to consider including/adding more programs that help students and are comfortable to attend. It is important to prioritize the mental health of college students because they are part of and will lead the future but could make wrong choices that could be prevented in the first place.

1. Creates Bad Health.

Our health is something very important and mental health has a greater impact on one’s health than normally thought. When our mental health is not the best it can bring bad outcomes. In my situation, during my first year of college, I began feeling sad due to spending the majority of my time doing school work. Over time my mental state changed and was no longer at its best. As a result, this affected my physical health since I gained more weight because I was no longer active, I would usually be eating either too late or a lot which impacted my health not a good way.

2. Anxiety Affects.

Anxiety causes problems towards the mental state of college students, leading to depression. This is equally important because as before it may result terribly. I knew a friend that as a result of online school her social anxiety got worse; causing her not to socialize with many people now in college, making her depressed and feeling alone. I understood her problem and tried helping her so that she could feel better and get out of that stage of depression. However, not many are aware of these problems and I am sure that with better resources at school she could have recovered quicker and better.

3. Drug Addiction.

When our mental health is not right, it can cause us to make wrong choices just to feel some satisfaction or have the pain go away for some time. Many who are not happy can fall into drug addiction which could even result in death. Therefore, it is essential for college students to have available resources they can go to for help instead of taking dangerous paths just to help them relieve the pain. While I was in online college I knew of some of my classmates who would be taking aspirins constantly for their headaches or other medicine; for some, it became a daily routine.

4. Relationships are Impacted.

One downfall to being in a poor mental state is that it can negatively affect relationships with other people. I remember when I started feeling down during my freshman year in college I started talking less to people about how I felt since it seemed easier than to try to describe my feelings in afraid that I would not be understood and be considered dumb. It went to the point where I rather pushed people away and at times I would not even want to talk with my own family. This brings importance because many students face this problem as I did and do not know what to do.

5. Consequences towards Future.

Mental health has a huge impact on the future of college students. Negative mentally can cause a big chain of trouble. Students like myself when depressed during a time period begin losing communication with others, feel uninspired, and start procrastinating. For example, there were times where I felt so tired and would not do some assignments which obviously impacted my grades and could indeed affect my progress towards graduation, this also means I cannot get that desired job if I do not graduate. This results in having more downfalls than accomplishments and is why it is important for college students to not let their mental stage be negative.

6. Harmful Decision Making.

Mental health is important because it causes college students to make terrible choices that are not necessary. These include self-harming and suicide. Some students get tired, feel alone, or feel like there is no escape from the bad period they are facing. Years ago I had a family friend who unfortunately decided to take his life away because he had too much pressure from school. This was a hurtful loss and I would have wished things went differently. I would have rather him look for help instead of taking his life away. More people need to become aware of students as some may be struggling or looking for help.

7. Affecting Society.

Making sure university students are doing well mentally is necessary since it eventually does affect everyone as a society. Students who do not finish and obtain their degrees are leaving their valuable skills behind, not benefiting us in the future. I had a cousin who dropped out of college because he could no longer take the pressure and his mental health did not help. He was majoring in criminal justice to become a police officer. Like others, he could have been a very great officer or others been the best doctors, business managers, etc. However, not receiving the help results in not graduating so we no longer benefit from this.

Conclusion

To conclude, many do not realize how important it is for college students to be fine mentally or see the impacts it could have on us in the future. Many do not understand the hardships students go through like I did or some of my family members and friends did. With examples of why the mental health of college students is important and the impacts it can have on the students like me I wish to bring awareness to this issue and that is why I decided to now investigate more on how have college students been or are being impacted mentally with returning to classes in person in the United States?

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