Mental Health and the Potential for Worlwide Change

My project deals with mental health and the potential for changing the world. Well, I’m sort of a pessimist in that I believe that it’s impossible for one person to make a worldwide change because it’s incredibly difficult to change the opinions of others or control their actions. It really takes an understanding of the issue at hand and a cooperative, collective effort from a lot of people to make a big change. This is why I believe that any worldwide change has to start with the individual making a change within themselves…realizing the issue and realizing that they themselves might need to change. “You have to be the change” (Tom Brandner). And if enough people make that change and direct themselves toward whatever goal needs to be accomplished then a worldwide change can occur.

Take Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement for example. It wasn’t just Dr. King or Rosa Parks or anybody who was in favor of social reform that made a change. It was also all the people who were opposed to social reform that eventually realized the extent of the issue and realized they needed to change and accept African Americans to the best of their ability in order to live in a peaceful society. But if those people who were opposed to giving rights to African Americans didn’t decide to change then obviously no social change would have come about.

So for my project, instead of handing out flyers and surveys, doing a bunch of research and interviewing people, it’s on a much smaller scale. I worked on an applied project, but it didn’t involve anything except learning about myself and experimenting on my mental health. My project is really all about the individual exploring themselves and trying to better themselves in hopes that enough people can do that and find peace, satisfaction and happiness within themselves the world can be a better place. This brings up the mental health part. In order to achieve those things you must maintain a good, well-balanced mental state.

I realized this through an experience I had in the beginning of the year. I came down with an illness that very much threatened many other aspects of my life. I could barely sleep, I couldn’t really eat at all (I had no appetite), I fell behind in school because I was so preoccupied with my medical issue, and I didn’t even feel like seeing friends or having any fun. I called my parents frequently during this time period, questioning whether or not I belonged in college. My mother told me that some people just aren’t cut out for college, and she suggested that I just come home until the medical issue was over and we could decide what to do with the rest of my schooling. My father (who I spoke to more often) gave me more optimistic yet realistic advice. He told me to stay in school and finish the semester strong. He told me that even though it’s very difficult to do, the key to well-being and good mental health is to consider the health, social and academic aspects of your life and then change/fix/balance them in a way that you’ll feel the most positive results.

After having this experience I knew that it would make for a great ILS project. As this issue was still somewhat occurring at the same time that the project was assigned I decided to start a personal experiment. For the experiment I would do exactly what my dad told me to do. I would live every day paying attention to the social, health and academic parts of my life and really taking into consideration what I needed to do with each in order to fix my problem and live healthier (without ignoring any one component, no matter how much more important one of them might seem).  So I started going to bed a lot earlier, trying to go to sleep before 1:00am-1:30am; tried eating better and forcing myself to have a bigger appetite; studied a lot harder than what I was doing before and making sure I did well on my assignments and tests; and even though I haven’t really been able to go out and “party” since I got sick, I’ve been watching a lot of films with my good friend, playing and listening to a lot of music (which is my main hobby), going out to dinner with friends, and I even went to a concert last week.  My hypothesis, clearly, was that if I did those things and conquered those three pillars then I would feel positive effects and I would feel a lot healthier. I honestly doubted my hypothesis in the beginning stages of the experiment. I always thought that the whole “balance” thing was pretty cheesy and that it was just something adults told younger kids in order to motivate them in school. I didn’t think that it would produce any results, let alone positive ones. After evaluating the results at the end of about three weeks or so I can surprisingly say that my hypothesis was correct. After fixing the issues that I had fallen into and then continuing to satisfy each pillar day by day I found that I really did feel a lot healthier.

It’s a little bit confusing as to how this mental health study ties back to the original theme of the project: changing the world and making it a better place, and what I was saying about change. I think a lot of problems that exist in the world are the results of people being unsatisfied and unhappy with their lives…especially the people who are rich, or who have power or who have the resources to change the ways in which they live (basically anybody who has the privilege to go to college, have a job, even just live in a first world country with opportunity). We are the people who can really affect the world. If everyone who had the opportunities that we do could maintain a good mental health and live in peace and harmony then the world could potentially be a much brighter place. I realize that there are many other things that can affect your mental health, but as far as what you can control I challenge you to make that change and spread it to everyone you can.  “Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.” (John Lennon)

Mental Health Among College Students

For my project I’m trying to prove that the main components that affect mental health among college students are The Social, The Academic, and The Health…The Three Pillars, as I like to call them. I feel that if we understand the categories in which mental health is broken down into we can find solutions to mental problems such as depression and anxiety that are prevalent among college students. I hypothesize that each of these components are very much correlated to each other, and that they operate in a complex system. For example, to get good grades you not only have to study and do your work, but you also have to make sure that you’re feeling well physically and psychologically. Because if you’re not getting enough sleep or you’re feeling down because you don’t have any friends then over a period of time the stress will greatly impair your ability to perform academically, even if you don’t feel the effects right away.

In order to test my hypothesis, and in hopes of enriching the lives of all college students, I plan to conduct a personal experiment (possibly with the inclusion of some of my friends) in which I (we) will live day by day (over a period of about two weeks) perfectly satisfying each of the three pillars. Now this study may sound very subjective because “perfect social satisfaction”, “perfect health satisfaction”, and “perfect academic satisfaction” mean different things to different people. To solve this problem, I’ve researched some scholarly literate about mental health among college students and the psychology of happiness, which teach how to balance the different components in live in order to achieve good mental health. They give a general idea of what needs each of the pillars require in order to achieve mental health. I will apply this to my life over the next few weeks and see if it makes me feel and happier/healthier.

I’ve drawn out a systems diagram of each of the three pillars to show how they are connected and to show how they can lead to bad mental health, if not taken care of properly. Unlike the system structures that we learned about in the Meadows book, the Three Pillars operate in more of a web type structure. Each subcomponent of the three pillars is interconnected with one another. As seen in this systems diagram the pillars operate in a web like structure, as stated before, with each subcomponent connected to the next. Although there are many more problems that could arise within each pillar I’ve listed a few obvious ones that are typical to college students in order to show how they are linked together. For Health, two main issues that are common among College students are not eating right (possibly ingesting drugs and alcohol) and especially not sleeping right. For Social, obviously not adjusting well, not making friends, and feeling very lonely are problems that are very common. As for the academics things like falling behind, not being able to focus and just getting bad grades are main issues that affect the students, especially for those new to the system. We can start with the health. Not sleeping right can lead to not eating right because sometimes students will resort to caffeine, energy drinks, and unhealthy snacks instead of substantial meals, and vice versa. Not eating right can keep from sleeping well just from being deprived of proper nutrients. Here we see the classic reinforcing loop. Now we connect with the academic. Poor nutrition and not sleeping right can lead to not being able to focus in school, because it can leave you feeling tired, uncomfortable and sick. Not being able to focus will lead to getting bad grades and falling behind. Those two things will lead to not sleeping right because you would either be up all night trying to study and catch up or you’d just be up all night worrying. As for the social, falling behind and doing poorly in school can make you feel out of place because you might start to think that maybe you’ve chosen the wrong college if academics are too difficult. This leads to feelings of loneliness and low self-esteem which then leads to not sleeping well, which repeats the cycle. The many reinforcing loops within this system suggest that good mental health is not something that can be acquired by satisfying just one of the pillars but all of them.

Mental health has become a major issue among college students, more so now than ever. “During the last decade, university and college counseling centers have reported a shift in the needs of students seeking counseling services, from more benign developmental and informational needs, to more severe psychological problems.” (Kitzrow, 168). According to research conducted by the Science Daily “One key finding is beginning to show how today’s technology is impacting students’ health and their academics. In fact, 28.7 percent of students surveyed report excessive computer/Internet/TV use and 41.8 percent indicate the activity affected their academic performance.” (Science Daily 2007). This is an example of how the social components of college life can be detrimental to academic performance, and their overall mental health. Dr. Ed Ehlinger, the director and chief health officer of the university’s Boynton Health Service says “The health of college students is important not only to the institutions they attend but also to the health of the state of Minnesota. Good health helps students remain in school, and a college degree or certificate is an excellent predictor of better health and economic status throughout one’s lifetime” (Science Daily 2007). In the following year, Dr. Ed Ehlinger continued his research and concluded that “Lack of sleep, excessive television/computer screen time, stress, gambling, alcohol and tobacco use and other health-related issues are taking a toll on college students’ academic performance.” (Science Daily 2008).

There has been a major demand for counseling among colleges recently. “A variety of social and cultural factors such as divorce, family dysfunction, instability, poor parenting skills, poor frustration tolerance, violence, early experimentation with drugs, alcohol and sex, and poor interpersonal attachments may account for some of the increase.” (Kitzrow, 171). This reinforces the need for good social health in order to maintain good overall mental health. Another study conducted by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program “asks entering students how much time they spent doing high school homework. Nationally more than 60% of entering freshmen indicate that they spent less than six hours per week studying seven though 90% earned a high school grade point average of B or higher. Inadequate study habits create enormous stress and anxiety for college students.” (Harper 1). This study proves the academic pillar, that good mental health requires good studying habits and being able to succeed academically. One of the main health concerns that students are always worried about is the freshman 15. The freshman 15 is an issue that deals with each of the three pillars. It is most prevalent among women, but it’s a mental health issue that should be addressed. “This fear can cause people to worry intensely about their weight, develop a poor body image and engage in harmful behaviors like dangerously restricting calories. Recently, research showed that about two thirds of the study’s female college students reported at least a moderate concern about the Freshman 15 (Delinsky & Wilson, 2008), which was connected to concern about their shape and weight.” (Tartakovsky 1).

Each of these findings suggest that health, social and academic components of college life are equally as important and need to be tackled with the same amount of care and concern.

 

 

 

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2008/09/19/the-freshman-15-shifting-the-focus-from-weight-to-well-being/

 

Mental Health Issues and College Students: What Advisors can do- Ruth Harper

 

The Mental Health Needs Of Today’s College Students: Challenges and Recommendations- Martha Anne Kitzrow

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071115125827.htm

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081021120925.htm