Fighting On With Mindfulness

“According to this screening from the health center,” I said to my roommate, “I am not only at risk of an eating disorder, but I show traits of depression, anxiety and suicide.” Even though USC health center’s online self-assessment screenings don't give actual diagnoses, I honestly wasn’t that surprised at my result. I’ve dealt with most of these issues since I was in middle school. My roommate’s reply, however, surprised me. “Well yeah, but everyone struggles with that these days.” It wasn’t that I was surprised that college students struggle with their mental health like I do. Earlier this year USA Today put together a brief look on college mental health, reporting that nearly half of college students have had feelings of hopelessness and cited an assessment from the American College Health Association that most students who struggle with mental health do not seek treatment. With more mental health articles and anecdotes circulating our feeds, as well as places like USC that provide resources, departments and even events centered on mental well-being, it seems that awareness of the issue is removing the stigma of struggling with mental health. But what surprised me that night was how my roommate’s bluntness. If I didn’t already know that my roommate genuinely cares about me, I would have said they were rudely dismissive. To that end, is it possible that in raising awareness of mental health on college campuses we are also normalizing it to the point where people will become dismissive on the issue? It seems counterproductive that for all the articles and Youtube videos that work to normalize mental illness among American adults, there is a possibility that this might backfire and make people have a “meh, what can you do?” approach to the issue. And to the mainstream’s credit, the only time I’ve ever felt this type of dismissiveness was with my roommate...and Internet commenters denying that mental illness in this country is even a real issue at all. With one in five American adults struggling with mental illness in a given year, we as a country can’t afford to be dismissive of those people if we genuinely care about the well-being of all who live here. That might be easy for me to say as a person who has spent much of her college career getting a handle on her mental health, but helping people with mental health issues and placing more research on this topic are worthy endeavors. The point isn’t to coddle, but rather to help people learn how to get through their day-to-day despite also handling life’s lowest moments. Normalizing mental health in to the point of dismissiveness would, in the end, just undermine the work of those trying to remove its stigma.