The Kids Are Not All Right: College Mental Health Needs an Intervention
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Big Think and the Mental Health Channel are proud to launch Big Thinkers on Mental Health, a new series dedicated to open discussion of anxiety, depression, and the many other psychological disorders that affect millions worldwide.

In the fourth video in the series, Dr. Victor Schwartz of The Jed Foundation runs through some staggering stats about mental health in college. University students are, in general, a very stressed-out demographic. Factor in things like alcohol abuse, homesickness, and elevated risk for sexual assault, and you've got quite the cocktail for mental health issues. Does the typical college student, asks Schwartz, really understand the sort of care options available to her? One of the major challenges of college mental health care is encouraging students to step forward when they are depressed or suffering from anxiety. It's in everyone's best interest for mental health to be a big priority. The trick is to remove the stigma from the process.
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VICTOR SCHWARTZ:
Dr. Victor Schwartz is Medical Director at The Jed Foundation, which strives to promote emotional health and prevent suicide among college and university students. Dr. Schwartz has over 20 years of experience as a psychiatrist working in college mental health. He was medical director of NYU's Counseling Service, established a counseling center at Yeshiva University and was most recently University Dean of Students there. He was an original member of the American Psychiatric Association’s Presidential Task Force on College Mental Health and co-chair of the APA working group on legal issues in college mental health. Dr. Schwartz is a member of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry Committee on the College Student and has served as an advisor to Active Minds on Campus and Gun Free Kids. He is co-editor with Dr. Jerald Kay, of Mental Health Care in the College Community (Wiley, 2010). His work has focused on crisis management, legal issues and the community/public health model in college mental health.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Victor Schwartz: There’s no legal requirement for schools to provide health or mental health services to their students. Colleges do it because it’s the right thing to do and because it’s prudent. I think there’s a growing understanding and it’s something that we at the Jed Foundation are trying to really make schools aware of that it’s in the school’s and the student’s best interest to provide a really broad array of support services to their students. The more we can keep students on track doing well in school and getting to the graduation line, the better it is for everybody involved. One of the big challenges in providing services is that most schools actually provide these services for free. It’s very, very rare for colleges to charge for the mental health services. Of course students and their parents would say they’re charging plenty already. But services are usually provided without extra cost to the students and that creates a real challenge for the schools to balance the cost and benefit of the range of services they’re providing. The other challenge is that in the 18 to 25 year old age group many people have had either no experience with health or mental health care. People who’ve had experiences as teens often haven’t had the greatest experiences because they’ve often actually been forced into treatment or, you know, sent to treatment outside of their own will. So getting the people who need treatment into the system is often a very, very significant challenge. And then it’s a challenge for the system to have the resources, the personnel, the number of clinicians and visits in order to take care of everybody who needs care.

The one thing we do know is that college students drink more alcohol than their non-college attending 18 to 25 year old cohort. So clearly we know that college is a risk factor for increase in alcohol use. And there are a series of problems that are coincident with that and that does present a serious concern. We know about a third of college students will report an alcohol binge every two weeks or so. So that’s a really significant number and we know that there are a lot of negative consequences associated with especially the high intensity drinking that sometimes goes on. We know that there are fights that occur. Obviously car accidents that occur.......

To read the transcript, please go to https://bigthink.com/videos/victor-sc...