Promoting Mental Health on Campus
It's early for parents and high-school seniors to be tackling the pre-college summer agenda: packing towels and Band-Aids, browsing through the course catalog, and learning the names of the freshman roommates, to name a few items.
So there's plenty of time to heed the message conveyed at the Jed Foundation gala Wednesday, that parents and students should prepare for the mental health challenges of a big transition year, and of the college years in general.
A child's life could depend on it. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death in college students, and 45% of college students reported they were so depressed that they found it difficult to function, in a survey conducted by the National College Health Assessment.
But parents and children are not so comfortable talking about mental illness, nor are they well informed.
It was a personal tragedy — the death of their youngest son, Jed, at the age of 20 — that led Donna and Phil Satow to create the foundation to prevent suicide and promote mental health among college students. The Satows are the parents of the New York Sun's business and real estate editor, Julie Satow.
The transition year is of particular interest to the foundation, which commissioned a survey of parents to determine attitudes and knowledge of mental health. The results were not encouraging: Asked to pinpoint, without help, specific signs of depression in teens other than prolonged sadness, only 15% were able to name more than one or two signs; only 3.4% identified suicidal thoughts as a sign of depression.
A scarier statistic: 51% of parents said they thought an unknown teenager in the community being treated for mental health problems would "be able to pull themselves together if they wanted to."
As various speakers at the gala made clear, college students too often try to face their mental health issues alone.
One program that has made a tremendous impact nationwide — winning a Peabody Award and an Emmy nomination — is the "Half of Us" campaign created by the Jed Foundation and MTV Networks's college channel, mtvU. The name refers to the refrain, presented in public service announcements, that since mental illness affects half of us, it affects all of us.
"It's not about keeping your head above water, it's about feeling all right," Pete Wentz says in one of the spots, which, in addition to well-known artists, also show college students in situations they can easily relate to, where depression is often manifested, such as not being able to sleep or concentrate on a paper.
"One story at a time, we can shatter the stigma," mtvU's general manager, Stephen Friedman, said.
The foundation has a tip sheet for parents at its Web site (www.jedfoundation.org).
agordon@nysun.com
