Recognize the signs

The severity of depression and, or anxiety for most college students is a serious problem.

A 2012 National Alliance on Mental Illness survey, “College Students Speak,” showed 27 percent of all respondents reported living with depression, and 11 percent said they live with anxiety.

And that’s just those who actually know and admit their disability.

BestColleges.com states in “College Guide for Students with Psychiatric Disabilities,” that about 30 percent of college students struggle with schoolwork because of mental illness, and one in four experienced suicidal thoughts.

These numbers are way too high to ignore. Schools should care more about the students individually rather than making sure they constantly have hard homework and tests.

The average student without any disabilities would be able to handle a hard workload, but a student with a psychiatric disability might not be able to handle nearly as much. For those students, just getting out of bed and going to class is a huge accomplishment, and that’s something other students and instructors just don’t understand.

I’ve personally been dealing with depression since I was a kid, and having to make the transition to being in college has been so much more difficult for me than other people I know. Students like me struggle with getting assignments done good and on time, and that’s not because we’re “lazy,” as the stigma would suggest.

Some people wake up every day battling the want to just give up and drop out. It is significantly harder to concentrate, plan ahead, organize thoughts and assignments, and nearly impossible to successfully study. Forgetfulness is another huge impact of depression, and that leads to not turning things in on time, or forgetting to study for exams.

Depressed students also tend to internally refuse to finish assignments or other tasks if they feel overwhelmed about it. It’s not a conscious decision — it’s just that inside depressed demon that makes us feel like we can’t handle it, and we shut down. That process of getting stressed and shutting down leads to feeling dumb and worthless.

It can make people feel incapable.

There isn’t a way to treat it for every person either. For many people, medication doesn’t help improve symptoms at all, and they usually don’t have enough motivation to exercise, eat better, make new friends, or any of those self-help options. They’re forced to struggle on their own until they find something that can help.

Students who deal with constant depression should receive more support from peers, instructors and university services. This is such a huge issue that there should be sufficient support for it. Disability services need to recognize how hard regular schoolwork is for these students and provide a way to make a specified plan for the individual and their instructors.

Depression impacts students every day, and without any help, we’re just going to keep seeing dropouts and self-harm rates increase.

Simply spreading awareness of how hard it is could help those who need it.

Kasey Haren can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @HarenKasey