What’s not known about college students’ mental health
By Leslie Medina
A student at the University of Southern California (USC) recently opened up about what it’s like dealing with mental health problems while being a student.
We all have problems. Some of us have it harder than others mainly adults, people with working jobs etc, but what about students- specifically the ones who are currently studying and learning and trying to achieve something in life?
According to a recent study, studying and teaching are some of the most stressful and hardest things to do. Based on this, we can predict that college students have it very hard even with just being accepted and attending college.
After taking a tour of the USC campus and looking at all the students, we could predict what goes on in their minds and it can really make you wonder how they’re able to maintain a steady balance or how they’re dealing with their mental health while going on this journey.
Sitting down, just relaxing and sketching in his personal notebook, was Ryan Stiles, a Californian student willingly to share his battle with mental health throughout his school years.
Stiles has been attending USC for the past 3 years and will become a senior this fall. He’s a business administration major raised in San Francisco who had a lot to say about his experience with mental health.
In high school, he said he started noticing a lack of confidence in himself and in his abilities and started developing debilitating thoughts which haunted him throughout the four years. For this reason when it came time to apply to college, he was unsure of what to major in. He applied to USC still being very indecisive, but was very thrilled when he was able to explore and really find himself again.
Stiles said his condition was never really serious or diagnosed, but instead of going to a therapist or counseling he said what really helped him was simply attending college.
Even though college was much harder than high school, he said what made it better was that he surrounded himself with positive people and made healthy friend groups which allowed him to gain confidence, be happy, and finally allowed him to be able to go on with his day without any distractions and do all the stuff a normal, healthy person would do.
Nowadays, Stiles is pretty happy with his new life even though he still struggles with little things such as teamwork and communication skills, but what he says really helped him was honestly attending college in the first place because yes, even though it can be stressful, it can really help with certain problems that aren’t academic.
Stiles’ advice for college students or for anyone in general who is currently struggling with any mental health problems is to surround yourself with family and friends that care about you and will actually listen and let you open up. Stiles claims that a big mistake that he made when struggling with his mental health was that he didn’t ask for help when he needed it which isn’t the right thing to do.
Stiles hopes that one day mental health will be talked about/acknowledged more and will hopefully become a topic that more and more people can open
up/talk about without feeling judged.
