Scholastic Magazine University of Notre Dame's Student Magazine since 1867

Molly Kring

Names have been changed to retain confidentiality

College is supposed to be the best four years of your life. For a surprisingly large percentage of Notre Dame students, however, their years here can number among the worst. One in 11 students will go to the University Counseling Center (UCC) this school year. That’s 957 students dealing with mental health problems on a campus that is often too afraid to talk about these issues.

“I think one of the things that depression, the experience, has impressed upon me is an existential loneliness. I’m not sure if other people feel that they’re not alone, but it kind of seems like I’m profoundly alone.” These are the words of Katie*, a fifth-year senior who has been diagnosed with depression and bipolar disorder.

Even at a school like Notre Dame, which prides itself on creating a family atmosphere for students to call home, students like Katie manage to slip through the cracks. “I thought ND was my anti-depressant for many years ... ND opened so many opportunities that I never had before. Throughout the years I’ve been here, I’ve seen the dream I had be more circumscribed by my health, and I’ve had to make some compromises,” Katie says.

The rate of depression among college students nationwide has doubled in the past 15 years. Last year, 45 percent of students surveyed said they sometimes feel too depressed to function, and nine percent of college students have seriously considered suicide, according to an annual survey conducted by the American College Health Association. A June 2007 survey conducted by the University of Michigan indicates that more than half of students with significant symptoms of anxiety or depression do not seek help.

Notre Dame’s statistics, at least in those cases reported, are slightly lower than the national average. Nine percent of the student body visits the UCC each year, and depression and anxiety are consistently the two biggest concerns.

“Interestingly, our trend has been stable at ND, at least for the last 10 years, in terms of the problems students come to us with. Depression and anxiety are always the top two. That is a stable statistic,” Dr. Susan Steibe-Pasalich, director of the UCC, says.

What is it about Notre Dame that allows students to hide from the climbing depression rates at comparable universities? Steibe-Pasalich attributes the lower rates of depression at Notre Dame to the university’s Christian faith tradition, high student involvement in extracurricular activities and the close-knit residential life that many consider a hallmark of Notre Dame.

The high percentage of students living on campus creates a community environment not found at many schools. While it is possible for a student to go unnoticed in the busy dorm environment, the close-knit setting engenders relationship building and acts as a safety net for those students who may be on the verge of developing a mental illness.

“We have the unusual luxury among college campuses today of having 100 percent of our first-year students and 80 percent of all undergraduates living on campus,” Rev. Mark Poorman, C.S.C., vice president of student affairs, says. “This proximity to Hall Staff and to various university offices means that our students have great access to a range of student services.”

Although students have these resources available, many do develop various forms of depression. “Imagine if you were here the whole time, just a student without friends, just waiting for the day, a weekend you could go home,” Amy de la Torre, rectress of Cavanaugh Hall, says. “That would be very lonely, I think. And that would lead to a sadness, and that may not be a medical depression but it’s definitely an issue. The person would appear to be depressed because they would be so sad, I think. So probably the community, I think it has to help. I don’t know if every college has that.”

While many believe that Notre Dame does an admirable job of keeping students mentally healthy, one cannot help but be surprised by the number of people going to the UCC and by the many more that do not seek help. “I’ve always felt like the number of people who say they have depression and actually go to the UCC and are treated through there is probably much less than the actual number of people who have depression,” Katie says.

It’s safe to say that those students who are clinically depressed at Notre Dame are by no means alone. Even if Notre Dame’s numbers are lower than the national average, the question remains: Why are so many students on our campus depressed? And more importantly, what can we do about it?

We live on a campus where the average student is the perfect target for depression: competitive, intelligent and stressed. “I think kids are coming in more stressed out. They’ve had to work harder to get into Notre Dame, they’ve had to be more perfect, more driven. The bar is ever higher,” Anrè Venter, director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Psychology, says.

Those who cannot live up to these expectations struggle, some ultimately coping by constructing facades of happiness. These students are afraid to admit they are sad at the risk of appearing weak or incapable. “We’ve self-selected into this group where everyone wants to be the best and better than everyone else ... and you have to be happy while doing it. Do I think people really are as happy as they try to seem? No,” Lauren*, a senior who has recently recovered from a major depressive disorder, says.

These competitive and unrealistic standards are causing Notre Dame students to pack their planners with everything but what they need the most: time for themselves to rejuvenate. Father Jim Lewis, rector of Carroll Hall, says students are increasingly forgetting the value of silence in their everyday lives. “Among the most notable trends is the fact that one’s day is filled with activities to the extent that, if someone has some quiet time, it is quickly surrendered for music, texting, cell phone, etc.,” Lewis says. “Reasonable solitude is difficult to find within a dorm setting, particularly since there is nearly always someone who is awake and doing something in the hall. As such, we tend to live and even support?a hyperactive lifestyle, whereby there is no stage of the day where one begins to wind down.”

The student body has yet to fully realize that mental illness is not a distant problem. Part of the mental illness stigma on campus may be linked to the fact that many students are simply unaware that their peers have mental health issues. This prejudice hinders communication between those who need to talk and those who can listen, consequently delaying the healing process.

Lauren came to Notre Dame her freshman year already dealing with depression. While she eventually found a support network of friends, at first the stigma prevented her from opening up.

“Who wants a roommate that takes anti-depressants and has weird mental health issues? I didn’t really talk to anyone here when I first got here. I mean, what do you say to your roommate?” Lauren says. “People make a lot of jokes about stuff, which I think makes people not want to talk about it. The climate is such that we make fun of these things, but we don’t really talk about it.”

Venter believes this prejudice against mental illness is deeply rooted in the consciousness of our country and the students on our campus. He says that the stigma on Notre Dame’s campus will not be eradicated until society changes as a whole. “Is it possible to change the stigma against mental illness on our campus? Only if we change the nature of the environment. But how do we do that? I don’t think that’s doable. When people walk in here as a freshman, what they’ve had to do to get here is the breeding ground for the things they might be struggling with,” Venter says.

The competitive environment at Notre Dame, coupled with the stressful transition from home to college life, can trigger depression among students who already possess a genetic predisposition to the illness. “That first semester freshman year we see a lot of that particular type of sadness and depression. Someone who has always felt very safe, very protected, very sheltered, very loved, all of a sudden is thrown into an environment where they don’t know anyone,” de la Torre says.

The university especially looks out for first-year students since the transition to college can be a rough one. “It’s their first time away from home, away from their parents, where they have felt very secure and they know everything, to here where everything is new, and all the people are new,” de la Torre says. “So something that we discuss often at staff meetings is how to reach out to people, and one of the things that I’ve always asked is ‘Have you noticed if every freshman has a friend?’ because you don’t have to be the most popular person on campus, but everyone needs a friend. You need someone to go to dinner with, someone to talk to.”

Perhaps it is not Notre Dame that causes depression, but the environments from which Notre Dame freshmen are drawn. Many students are coming to school already on some sort of mental illness medication, and each year the freshman class boasts a higher average SAT score than the last. The freshman class seems to deal with this stress well, however; of the students the UCC sees, only 17 percent are freshman, compared to the 21 percent of seniors. “We see fewer first-year students. I attribute that to the strong First Year of Studies program. I think those advisors do a lot of buffering. The other classes have less of that kind of close academic attention,” Steibe-Pasalich says.

While depression may be something people shy away from discussing, the World Health Organization named depression the fourth most devastating illness in the world today and predicts that it will become the second by 2020. Depression is a very real issue, but it must also be noted that clinical depression is becoming increasingly misdiagnosed. Many people believe they are depressed when really they are simply exhibiting a response to normal life events. Because our society, especially at Notre Dame, is increasingly hesitant to admit that one is not always happy, we begin to think that our experience of sadness is unusual.

Depression is not just an extreme form of sadness. Its symptoms run much deeper than being in a bad mood. Clinical depression is characterized by a loss of interest in activities once enjoyed, a sudden change in weight or appetite, erratic sleep patterns, constant fatigue, difficulty concentrating, feelings of worthlessness and frequent thoughts of death or suicide. True depression is not something one can snap out of or “get over.” It is beyond a person’s control and many times is completely illogical to an observer. Certain life events can trigger depression, but no one event is the single cause.

Women are more likely to experience depression than men. The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that one out of every four women and one out of every 10 men will experience some type of depression during their lifetime. The average onset age for depression is the mid-20s, but some recent research shows that this age is decreasing with each successive generation.

“Sadness is normal, something that we all experience,” Megan Brown, staff psychologist at the UCC, says. “The difference between normal sadness and depression is in our functioning, how long it lasts and how intense it is. A sad person may not feel like getting out of bed in the morning. A severely depressed person may not be able to get out of bed in the morning.”

The symptoms of depression are difficult enough to deal with on their own, but, according to some students, when paired with the stress of college the struggle intensifies.

“I couldn’t sleep, and lack of sleep for several days on end, it put me in just a completely unreasonable psychological state, and I couldn’t think, and I couldn’t read, and I couldn’t concentrate or keep my emotions together,” Katie says. “Silly little things ... if someone was walking in front of me and didn’t hold the door for me, I’d be on the verge of tears ... silly little things. Things that don’t matter.”

Lauren’s experience was a bit different. “I didn’t feel sad exactly, it’s more like I just didn’t see the point to anything ... I would just sit on the floor, and there just didn’t seem to be a point to going to school or doing anything. Like I just felt like I wanted to sit there. The word apathetic isn’t quite strong enough. I didn’t cry all the time. I just didn’t want to do anything. And so I didn’t,” she says.

Brown emphasizes that a student does not need to be clinically depressed to visit the UCC. “Normal sadness is still a reason to come into the counseling center and talk about it. Our counseling center isn’t just for the mentally ill, and we can do a lot of prevention in talking about issues. At the counseling center, we’re glad when people come in the door to talk about their problems,” Brown says. The first intake appointment is free of charge for current students.

For those students who are unsure whether their symptoms are a cause for alarm, the UCC has created “Let’s Talk,” 15-minute confidential consultations with a counselor on the second floor of LaFortune Student Center. With this weekly event, the UCC hopes to target students who are leery of going to the actual counseling center, students who have a quick question about how to help a friend, or anyone who just wants to see if what he or she is feeling is normal.

Sometimes counseling is not enough. At this point, medication is prescribed. Contrary to popular belief, anti-depressants do not make people happier than they normally would be, but rather bring them to a point where they are able to function as they did before the illness hit. Anti-depressants, however, are socially taboo. Many are hesitant to recognize depression and anxiety as true medical illnesses and therefore refrain from taking medication. Others believe the drugs simply won’t work. A 2006 U.S. government study found that drugs cure depression in only half of medicated patients.

These findings and the intangibility of mental illnesses have made life difficult for those who are truly depressed. Brown believes this stigma is being replaced at ND with greater acceptance of those members of the student body with a mental illness. “We know that there’s a stigma about going to counseling. It is a safe place. There is some hesitation about taking medication. A number of people are concerned about side effects, becoming artificially happy. Some of the risks that have been published in the media are associated with suicide. There is some hesitancy, but at the same time people are becoming more educated as well,” Brown says.

For some, even medication has its limits. Katie has been hospitalized for mental illness issues several times while at Notre Dame, which led her to withdraw from the university for a year.

“It was a really hard thing to withdraw. ND was everything I wanted — to be, to do — and I loved it. At first it was kind of difficult. At home, I felt like I had lost a part of myself ... I wanted to be back in the dorm the next year because the dorm has always played an important role in providing everyday support and interaction with other people that gives me a reality check and keeps me in a balanced state of mind,” Katie says.

Although her Hall Staff and the UCC have been very supportive, the university has shown her a mixed response. It denied Katie housing on campus as a fifth-year senior. She says they didn’t see her mental illness as something that required that type of accommodation. “The Office of Students with Disabilities was just completely uncooperative with helping me live on campus. They say a student with disabilities has no need to live on campus. People don’t really realize how much goes into helping a person with a mental disorder stay stable. I think that’s still something that needs to be acknowledged — the complexity of the problem and the complexity of the solution,” Katie says.

Depression isn’t something that just goes away one day. It clouds one’s life for varying periods of time after the initial onset of the illness. Mental problems have a high risk of recurrence. Students who have dealt with a depressive disorder say that every day is a practice in prevention. “I think it’s more natural at this point to doubt myself than feel super confident about how I’m doing. There’s always the question of how far can I push myself,” Katie says.

Lauren says she has fully recovered but is still aware of her triggers and the importance of the relationships in her life. “For me, I think it was the final realization that I could rely on the people around me, and I didn’t have to do everything myself, and I didn’t always have to take care of everything myself. I didn’t always have to be the best at everything, and I didn’t always have to be happy, and that’s OK. See, I think I was under this misconception that I needed to be happy all the time, and thinking that just made me really depressed,” Lauren says.

Beneath many smiling faces of Notre Dame students lies a silent undercurrent of depression. The subsect of the student body experiencing this illness often feels they face an environment that is tainted with a stigma against being open about mental illness. Notre Dame has significant measures in place to provide support to those battling the illness, most notably extensive training for Hall Staff and UCC counseling sessions. Venter acknowledges that these efforts can greatly help those students already dealing with depression, but the numbers will not decrease until the environment on campus changes. “I would argue that the only way to change this is revolution,” Venter says.