Mental Health in post secondary school is something that I have been researching and studying before I applied for the MAT program. I’ve written about it on my website: https://gradingart.com/Mental-Health-1. You can find the sources of the following information there. Studies have shown that around 12% of students experience suicidal ideation while in college. Other studies have found that only “a small percentage of people who experience psychological distress seek professional psychological help.” On a report of students living with mental conditions 73% of students reported that they had a mental health crisis in college and for 35% of those students, their college did not know about it.
Mental health in college and in secondary schools is a complicated, difficult to talk about issue. I hope to be able to continue my research and writing about it because I believe that many of our current assessment structures, namely grades, negatively effect students with mental health. I believe there there is a serious lack of training for college professors on how to support students with mental health issues. I think in our culture there is a lack of understanding mental health issues.
In the essay, I go over my own mental health problems. This is not the only reason that I was driven to research and write about this issue. Someone that was very close to me was suicidal for a period of time when I was going to college. I missed classes to support them, as they were having difficulty in finding that support from their parents and from the college counselor, as the one college counselor we had was booked for weeks. I told teachers about my situation. Some believed me. Some thought I was making it up to get out of class and one threatened to fail me.
It took administrators to come in to resolve this issue. And I’m grateful for that. But the larger issue is the lack of support structures for students dealing with this issue in college. There is no excuse for not providing help and resources for students dealing with mental health crises.
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