Why Are So Many College Students

Depressed?
By GRACY OLMSTEAD • July 28, 2015, 12:05 AM

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The New York Times tells a sad tale of suicide and depression at The University of
Pennsylvania—a growing trend amongst universities throughout the nation:

Ms. Holleran was the third of six Penn students to commit suicide in a 13-month stretch,
and the school is far from the only one to experience a so-called suicide cluster. This
school year, Tulane lost four students and Appalachian State at least three — the
disappearance in September of a freshman, Anna M. Smith, led to an 11-day search
before she was found in the North Carolina woods, hanging from a tree. Cornell faced six
suicides in the 2009-10 academic year. In 2003-4, five New York University students
leapt to their deaths.

Nationally, the suicide rate among 15- to 24-year-olds has increased modestly but
steadily since 2007: from 9.6 deaths per 100,000 to 11.1, in 2013 (the latest year
available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). But a survey of college
counseling centers has found that more than half their clients have severe psychological
problems, an increase of 13 percent in just two years. Anxiety and depression, in that
order, are now the most common mental health diagnoses among college students,
according to the Center for Collegiate Mental Health at Penn State.

Soon after Ms. Holleran’s death, Penn formed a task force to examine mental health on
campus. Its final report … recognized a potentially life-threatening aspect of campus
culture: Penn Face. An apothegm long used by students to describe the practice of acting
happy and self-assured even when sad or stressed, Penn Face is so widely employed that
it has showed up in skits performed during freshman orientation.

While the appellation is unique to Penn, the behavior is not. In 2003, Duke jolted
academe with a report describing how its female students felt pressure to be “effortlessly
perfect”: smart, accomplished, fit, beautiful and popular, all without visible effort. At
Stanford, it’s called the Duck Syndrome. A duck appears to glide calmly across the water,
while beneath the surface it frantically, relentlessly paddles.

… Citing a “perception that one has to be perfect in every academic, cocurricular and
social endeavor,” the task force report described how students feel enormous pressure
that “can manifest as demoralization, alienation or conditions like anxiety or
depression.”

What is it about college that encourages this incessant pressure to achieve, and these
resulting moments of crisis?

It seems our performance-based education culture must play a sizable role in

this: quantified measures of skill turn learning into a competition. As Charles Tsai just
wrote for Medium,

Books and books are being written about how schools operate like factories and treat
students as clones of one another, training them to be compliant workers rather than
people who think for themselves. Even the elite schools, the ones that actually produce
the future business executives and presidents, do this. They make students jump through
arbitrary hoops and use the hoops to rank and sort them.

This encourages students to measure themselves against other high-performing

students, and fosters culture of anxiety in which we’re all striving for some impossible-
to-attain first place prize.

But even the style of learning and character developed is affected by this performance
emphasis, which values quantitative skills over qualitative goods: lauding athletic
prowess, the 4.0 GPA, the stunning internship portfolio—but passing over more
subjective, immaterial skills such as critical thinking, mental development, and
thoughtful class participation. It does not recognize a healthy social life, a deepening
interest in the culinary arts, or the business aplomb of a budding entrepreneur.

What is taught can even become secondary to the grades one receives, and the resulting
benefits realized by 1) the student in his or her career pursuits, and 2) the school in
financial supports and academic acclaim.

It’s also important to consider the crisis of choice that many students face when they
enter college. They’re often apart from any familial or communal support system,
entrusted with total authority and autonomy, and receive little to no system of rules or
guidelines to navigate looming dilemmas—saving the popular yet confusing “follow your
heart.”

It shouldn’t be surprising that students put into this situation often suffer a crisis of
identity, or at least one of direction, as they embark upon this new world. What their
parents or community prized may no longer be enough: what they thought great may of a
sudden appear mediocre. Some may abandon the rules of their past for a new, nearly
anarchical, exploration of self and its wants. Others may throw themselves into the rigid
rules of the new performance-based system they are faced with. But both paths are often
damaging.

The Times article is right to point out the role often played by demanding parents, as
Julie Lythcott-Haims pointed out in Slate a couple weeks ago:

In 2013 the news was filled with worrisome statistics about the mental health crisis on
college campuses, particularly the number of students medicated for depression. Charlie
Gofen, the retired chairman of the board at the Latin School of Chicago, a private school
serving about 1,100 students, emailed the statistics off to a colleague at another school
and asked, “Do you think parents at your school would rather their kid be depressed at
Yale or happy at University of Arizona?” The colleague quickly replied, “My guess is 75
percent of the parents would rather see their kids depressed at Yale. They figure that the
kid can straighten the emotional stuff out in his/her 20’s, but no one can go back and get
the Yale undergrad degree.”

We should be seriously concerned by a culture in which academic accolades and prestige

outweigh our concerns for inner emotional wellbeing.

The Times article also looks at our tendency to strive toward perfection, and all the
problems that stem from such behavior. While this is true, the problem with an anti-
perfectionism backlash is that it can easily lead students to the aforementioned
anarchical path, in which they run helter-skelter from goal to goal, hobby to hobby,
striving for fulfillment. We want to find that middle ground where we can encourage
students to be themselves, without throwing all rule books or life goals out the window.

Giving students a better college experience seems to involve the refocusing of education
on lasting, permanent goods—beyond one’s GPA and extracurricular performance. It
should also involve the encouragement and establishment of strong community
supports—on and off campus—to invest in a student as he or she grows. It is easy to
become distracted by academic accolades. But what should students walk away with
when they leave college? Hopefully, they should have a toolbox of critical thinking and
experiential skills to help them navigate the world, along with a community of friends
and mentors to assist them on their paths. Though these things can’t be
quantitatively measured, they will help students overcome their perfectionism and
depression, and hopefully help them emerge into the light of confidence and community.