Protect Mental Health in Your College Search: These five factors will help you broaden your perspective.
Lara Honos-Webb, Ph.D. and Grant Guess
Earlier this year, two different Stanford University students died by suicide. Each week, between one and three students are admitted to the inpatient psychiatric ward at Stanford Hospital; there may be even more students admitted to the four other psychiatric wards in the area.
These students attend one of the most elite institutions on this planet, and yet that fact may come with risk factors. The high-stress environment of an elite college may increase the risk of a student losing perspective.
The recent scandal that ensnared celebrities Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman shows that the college search has taken on a remarkable and dangerous loss of perspective as well. One goal of higher education is to broaden students’ perspectives, but first parents and students should broaden their perspective on the college search itself. They should consider these five factors for the college seeker: 1) physical health, 2) mental health, 3) lowered relative ranking as a risk factor, 4) social and emotional intelligence, and 5) financial security.
Stress was not meant to be a chronic mode of operation, particularly for developing brains. Toxic stress disrupts physical and mental health. We should consider a student’s stress during junior and senior year of high school if they lose perspective. Applying to a dozen or more schools, while expecting catastrophe if you don’t get into an elite school, is a formula for chronic stress. Every quiz, test, and project will affect the elite college seeker’s brain in the same way an attacking lion geared up our ancestors’ brains to escape.
The earlier that chronic stress hits the developing brain, the greater the risks to long-term mental health. Tolerable stress is comparatively infrequent, allowing the brain to recover. Frequent prolonged stress can negatively impact the architecture of the brain, creating lifelong mental health risks. Even one episode of major depression in the teen years predicts increased risk of future depressive episodes and persistent low-grade symptoms throughout life.
We must also consider the stress that students may encounter during their time at college. While elite universities offer elite professional networks and resources, students will encounter increased competition in classes. This increases stress, therefore causing mental health vulnerabilities. And because elite colleges admit the highest-ranking students from any school, most students at elite universities will have to cope with lower academic ranking relative to their standing in high school, perhaps for the first time in their lives. This is not to say that college seekers shouldn’t consider elite universities at all, but just to be aware of the associated risk factors. In fact, we should consider instituting publicly displayed mental health risk indexes for all universities.
Recent research has led to the conclusion that there is “an urgent need to help students reduce their experience of overwhelming levels of stress during college” (Liu et al 2019). This study found that:
•Stress exposure was strongly associated with mental health diagnoses, self-harm, and suicidality.
•25% of students reported being diagnosed with or treated for a mental health disorder in the prior year.
These alarming statistics show that we need to play a strong offensive game in preventing mental health problems in our college students and college seekers.
For college seekers, the first step is to take a broader perspective and increase detachment in college choice. Detachment is by definition a way to take the emotion out of a situation. This does not imply lowering one’s standards, but rather attaining non-reactivity about the outcome — recognizing that wherever students attend, they will be trading one set of problems for another. The more elite a college is, the lower your relative rank and the more stress you will face, which has mental health costs.
With a broader perspective that amplifies the value of mental health, students in both high school and college could learn to moderate toxic stress. The recent college admissions scandal reveals the narrow and dangerous path of valuing elitism above all else.
Think of the difference between driving a car and being a passenger. When you’re driving, you have to stay narrowly focused on the road ahead and may miss the bigger picture. You may scream at other drivers because you’re navigating a treacherous curve. As a passenger, you can gain a new perspective of your surroundings. Just like being in a plane at 30,000 feet or zooming out the camera lens, you’re able to notice things that you may have not been able to notice before.
Think about driving a car through the Rocky Mountains. As the driver, you must focus on a lot of things at once. You’ve got your feet switching back and forth between the brake and the gas pedals, your eyes are looking for cars ahead and behind, and simultaneously you’re keeping the car in its lane.
As a passenger, however, you don’t have much to worry about. So, to manage intense emotions, picture yourself in the passenger seat, able to take in the snow-covered peaks of the Rockies or the mountain goats scaling the cliffs above you. The passenger can observe these details because they are not preoccupied by driving the car. Apply this example to the pressure a student feels trying to get into their top college choice. Emotions are intense when you don’t get what you want. When you’re driving, you’re so concentrated on the road that you can’t take in those sights without potentially crashing the car.
But the broader perspective of the passenger seat allows you to look around and see how fortunate you are to have so many choices for college, and to be grateful for how far you have come. In college you will have more opportunity to pursue coursework in special interests you have. The increased relevance of your classes will increase your motivation. And you will likely have more time to yourself than in high school, since you will be spending less time in the classroom.
From a broader perspective, the transition from high school offers many benefits, no matter how elite the college is that you attend. As mentioned earlier, the point is not to discourage you from applying to elite schools but to consider there are mental health risks to more elite schools, since toxic stress is associated with negative impacts on the developing brain. The brain continues to develop until age twenty-five or beyond. The list below will improve parents’ and students’ ability to make a realistic assessment of the risks and benefits of their college decisions.
Five Factors to Include in a Broader Perspective
1) Reduce Stress. Stress can lead to many health problems such as headaches, stomach problems, fatigue, sleeplessness, and substance abuse. Would you consider choosing a college in part based on reducing your stress and therefore protecting your health? Focusing too narrowly on a path of optimizing prestige has potential costs that you should factor into your decisions.
2) Prevent Mental Health Problems. Knowing that stress exposure is a strong predictor of mental health diagnoses, we should take action to moderate stress in college. You can begin to do so with your choice of college. The alarming statistics about the consequences of stress should offer pause to anyone overly focused on getting into “the right college.”
3) Be a Big Fish in a Small Pond. Malcolm Gladwell’s book David and Goliath (2013) argues that there are many benefits to being a big fish in a small pond rather than a small fish in a big pond. He makes the case that being a small fish in a big pond diminishes confidence, which can translate later in life to lowered career expectations. In the study “A Big Fish in a Small Pond: Ability Rank and Human Capital Investment,” Elsner and Isphording conclude that a person’s rank in a school rather than their level of ability predicts that person’s expectations for their future career. A low rank is demoralizing and may also lead to more stress than being a big fish in a small pond.
4) Improve Social and Emotional intelligence. Research shows that emotional and social intelligence are among the strongest predictors of your success in life. An intense focus on grades in high school and then in an elite college may lead to decreased emotional and social development. If you devote most of your waking hours to perfect grades, you will have diminished opportunities for social interactions and the conversations and supports that enhance emotional intelligence.
5) Consider Financial Benefits. With headlines telling us that Americans owe 1.5 trillion dollars in college debt, a broader perspective requires that we consider cost in the college search. Many people are going to community colleges and then transferring to four-year colleges to save some of the expense of four years at a university with housing. You can see how this benefit relates to the other four in this list. If financial burdens or an overly competitive environment cause high levels of stress that lead to health problems, anxiety, or depression, you would be more healthy at a college where the financial pressure is less and your relative ranking is higher.
How can you gain a healthy perspective as you consider higher education? Remember to imagine yourself as a passenger in the car. Ask the driver to pull over so you can let the speeding and stressed drivers pass you, to maintain your own safety and health and to appreciate the view.
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References
Elsner and Isphording, “A Big Fish in a Small Pond: Ability Rank and Human Capital Investment,” Journal of Labor Economics 35, no. 3 (July 2017): 787–828. https://doi.org/10.1086/690714
Gladwell, M. (2015). David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, Back Bay Books.
Liu CH, Stevens C, Wong SHM, Yasui M, Chen JA. The prevalence and predictors of mental health diagnoses and suicide among U.S. college students: Implications for addressing disparities in service use. Depress Anxiety. 2019 01; 36(1):8–17. PMID: 30188598.
National Scientific Council on the Developing Child (2005/2014). Excessive Stress Disrupts the Architecture of the Developing Brain: Working Paper №3. Updated Edition. Retrieved from www.developingchild.harvard.edu.
Pennington B. (2002). The Development of Psychopathology: Nature and Nurture. New York: Guilford Press.
Stixrud, W., & Johnson, N. (2018). The Self-Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives [Kindle iOS version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com
