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Being a student is associated with a journey filled with curiosity and satiation of one's thirst for knowledge. This romanticized image is only partially true as students do face several mental health challenges. The sources that create pain points in the learning experience can be academic, personal, and environmental. According to research, poor emotional status of students hampers their learning experience. Conditions like anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and eating disorders lead to falling grades, poor learning outcomes, increase in dropouts, and insufficient socialization with peers and others.
The importance of good mental health is being recognized by educational institutions of all levels. As students grapple with emerging realities, schools and colleges are gearing up to provide the support they need to overcome behavioral and emotional challenges. Mental well-being is considered to be a priority on campus to ensure that graduands become productive members of society and do not slide into a life of disappointment and crime.
What Are the Mental Health Challenges Students Face?
The mental health challenges of students arise due to several factors. Therefore, the common manifestations such as anxiety, depression, and mood disorders can be traced to their life and academic circumstances—heavy course load, parental expectations, familial neglect, lack of emotional support, behavioral problems of parents or siblings, competitive cohort, poor social status, and so on. The list is not exhaustive because every day brings vivid experiences to young students as compared to an established routine of adults.
Anxiety is the topmost mental condition that students suffer. In mild to moderate levels, anxiety is inevitable as a learner manages academics, assignments, deadlines, sports, and extracurricular activities. However, feelings of overwhelm and constant fear of failure could lead to perennial restlessness and apprehension. Chronic anxiety interferes with the ability to concentrate and makes students irritable. It may be accompanied by headaches, muscle pain, poor digestion, and excessive perspiration.
Depression is characterized by disinterest in normal activities or hobbies and feelings of hopelessness. The person is sad or gloomy most of the time. Students with depression show no inclination to follow a routine, like attending classes, asking/answering questions in class, completing assignments, taking care of themselves, etc. As demands of the course or semester increase, they feel hopeless and withdraw further. This vicious cycle leaves them withdrawn from family and friends.
Students socialize in small or large groups. It is highly likely that body image issues will arise as weight and appearance are common topics in their conversations. Therefore, eating disorders are prevalent among adolescent and young adult student populations. Those who suffer from eating disorders indulge in unhealthy behaviors like binge eating, total avoidance of food, excessive exercise, experimenting with appetite suppressants to lose weight, shaming those who eat, and so on.
Students get trapped in addiction when they either seek escape from their conditions or experiment under peer pressure. Substance abuse often begins as a harmless activity, even a rite-of-passage in certain student rituals, but can quickly degenerate into an unhealthy habit, especially if conditions that precipitate it are present.
Addiction to these substances is a mental health issue and can have consequences on a student's emotional, mental, cognitive, and physical status. Sudden changes in physical appearance, body weight, social groups, interests, and grooming habits can indicate a substance abuse problem.
How Do Mental Health Problems Affect Student Life?
In order to provide the right kind of support, we need to know how poor mental hygiene affects students. With this knowledge, teachers and administrators can design appropriate mental health initiatives and set up systems to help learners.
1. Loss of Interest in Their Course
Students who face mental health challenges struggle to engage with the course that they are pursuing and the educational institution that they are attending. They become disinterested in the course, show poor attendance, and do not prepare well for classes.
Mental conditions like anxiety or depression sap the student's willpower to attend lectures or seminars and their enthusiasm to socialize with their peers. Their withdrawal from academics results in a decline in their grades, which further demoralizes them, feeding a negative loop.
2. Social Withdrawal
Students facing emotional challenges struggle to socialize easily and their poor mental health can prevent them from interacting with those around them. A big part of being a student is learning how to develop and maintain interpersonal relationships.
Students cannot make new friends and feel awkward around existing ones. They avoid participating in social activities and are content being aloof in a group.
3. Deficits in Personal Growth
The impact of mental health challenges is not restricted to bad mood or poorly developed social skills. They can disrupt their personal growth achievement as disinterest might hamper participation in fulfilling activities or seizing opportunities for development.
Student life lays the foundation for lifelong learning and growth. From the experiences inside and outside of a classroom, students are supposed to pick up skills to negotiate situations and overcome problems.
4. Lack of Optimism
Students should look forward to building their future by being optimistic about the possibilities open to them. Those with mental health issues lack the positive mindset toward a bright future. They allow their limiting beliefs to cloud their perception.
These students often fail to see a bright future ahead of them and are often uninterested or unwilling to work toward long-term goals. More often, as these students don't see a bright future ahead of them, they fail in the course or drop out.
5. Stunted Learning Capabilities
Mental health issues have been shown to affect the cognitive abilities of an individual, which can be disastrous for students. They need to learn, absorb, and articulate well. Retaining information and applying the learning are quite difficult if students are unable to concentrate on what is being taught. Anxiety could lead to memory loss that can trigger low grades on assignments and tests, causing more trauma.
6. Low Self-Esteem
Mental health challenges cause students to start doubting their abilities, skills, and knowledge which affects their self-esteem. Poor self-perception prevents them from seeking help to rebound from setbacks or adopt a positive approach to overcome challenges.
Conclusion
Students are increasingly subjected to various stressors that affect their mental health. However, this also highlights the need for setting up focused mechanisms in educational institutions and in the larger community for early detection, therapeutic and behavioral interventions, and support. No student should have to cut short their educational journey because of a lack of a helping hand in battling their inner demons.
Steve Verghese is a trained psychologist with an MSc in Counseling Psychology from the Indian Institute of Psychology and Research.
