In the news: Cornell University and the relevance of mental health resources in college
In light of the recent tragedies at Cornell University, I thought it would be timely to revisit the topic of mental health and wellness for college students. I do not pretend to be a mental health professional or expert—only a recent college grad sharing personal experience and observations. A few key sets of resources come to mind when it comes to mental and emotional health issues in college.
Friends—old and new
I went through a weird sort of adjustment phase in which I had a hard time talking with my best friends from home while we were scattered at our respective campuses. Conversations could get awkward when we were still navigating our new lives and I didn’t know how to communicate normally with them. Do I tell them all about my classes and new friends that they don’t know and vice versa? Kind of weird. It wasn’t until around sophomore year when I started experiencing “growing pains” with my original group of college friends and connecting with more new friends—who ultimately became more permanent parts of my life—that I discussed the more nebulous aspects of college with my friends from home, only to discover that they’d had similar experiences. We went to different schools in different states and pursued distinct paths, but that didn’t mean that we couldn’t still relate to one another, which was a huge comfort when I discovered it.
That said, I think that part of what makes connecting with new friends in the college environment is that conversations can seesaw dramatically from the very banal to the most serious—I had conversations ranging from awkward Orientation-week conversations based around “So how did you choose Oxy?” to surprisingly intense 2 a.m.-in-the-common-room discussions with new friends about our families or other personal matters. It’s helpful to try to bring it to somewhere in the middle, more than small talk but not always hugely emotional or serious topics. Talk transitions—it’s something everyone has in common, yet handles a little differently. When I started finding similarities and learning from the differences between me and my new college friends, that’s when I started to feel more at home and less uncertain about everything.
Resident Advisors, Resident Assistants, Hall Advisors…
…whatever a college chooses to call them, RAs are an excellent resource for many college issues (that’s what they’ve signed up to do!), mental health and emotional adjustment being two primary ones. When I started college, I was still dealing with the recent death of a friend in an accident that happened right before high school graduation. It was the kind of thing where I thought I was okay, but then I would have moments (or days…or weeks) when I so clearly was not. Partway through my first semester, I went to one of my RAs during a particularly difficult day with this and, honestly, the most important thing she did was listen. RAs are trained in listening and communication skills and I appreciated that she was willing to be the first person at college that I let know about this part of my life. Different colleges train and utilize RAs in different ways, but by and large they’re there because they want to be—and that makes a huge difference.
On-campus health care facilities and services
One of the best statements I ever heard about college students seeing on-campus mental health professionals came from a student life administrator. She said that all college students should at least try a couple of therapy sessions because now is the time to do it when we’re young, dealing with a boatload of challenges, and this may be the time when a therapist is most accessible (can’t get much more conveniently located) and probably at much better rates. Prefer to see someone off-campus? That works too—just about any college health center I know will refer students to medical professionals of all fields in the surrounding community that work with student health insurance providers. Try it. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to continue. It’s that simple.
What is your reaction to the tragedies at Cornell? What advice do you have for mental and emotional health resources in college?
