You really don’t know what it’s like to feel alone when you are attending a university who enrolls 30,000 students, living in a building that holds 1,000 of those, residing 20 minutes from three siblings, two parents, a dog and a girlfriend (the last two give all the kisses a guy could need) – yet each night you feel surrounded by nothing but concrete and white paint. This is not only a personal rendition; this is one story out of the thousands attending our Canadian universities.
I felt alone in my six bedroom advertised “suite,” adorned with a fully-furnished bedroom, spacious living room and squeaky marble kitchen. At $630 a month most would call me spoiled, and if they knew I was a humanities student some might have far more selective words for this “total waste of money” at my parent’s hard-worked expense of course. This attack of negative stigma towards the faculty of humanities is a relentless one in this recessive economy.
Take online forums who have recently revealed to me the surprising factoid that I am “literally burning my parent’s money” but then maybe I should also stop googling “Is humanities a good major?”
However, this piece is not going to be a heroic defense to the faculty of humanities, but as the sarcastic undertone reveals: I feel like I am working towards a worthless degree – better yet, a worthless life.
What my rented room did not advertise was the impending deep depression awaiting me right behind the pretty door. I was a first year who was not living on-campus. Admittedly, that was my fault as I had missed the residence application deadline, in what was a grand display of my university level intelligence. I lived in a dark pit, in which it was in every way. It may have looked like the Ritz of residences but I hated everything inside its walls. I lived with four other upper-year strangers, two of whom spoke little English and one of whom I saw only twice over four months of living together. They locked themselves in their own separate rooms, scurried to the washroom when needed, generally just kept to themselves and I followed suit.
I was miserable. I fell into a routine that started as eat-class-sleep but evolved into sleep-sleep-sleep and sleep some more. I had gone to class with all intentions of getting amazing grades, but that spark faded - fast. All-nighters for essays turned into no essay at all and missing a couple classes turned into no class at all. The long and the short of it is: I got lonely and gave up on everything else because of it. I felt the pressure of academic success and faltered on it when I didn’t have anybody around me for support. I saw my university career as useless in four years so I thought I might as well admit defeat now.
I lost the one thing I took for granted: human interaction. This depressive state exists in student houses, apartments, commuters and even packed residences on-campus. Students become hermits when they have to budget their time around emotionally strenuous pressure to perform well in school. They just do not have time to properly recuperate from stress through relaxation and socialization, in what I would say, essentials to not kill yourself.
All through secondary and post-secondary education we students are bombarded with fear - you could call them threats. We are told three basic premises: “you need to go to university”, “you need good grades in university to get a good job”, “don’t do any of those two and you will be a garbage man for the rest of your life.” These are the statements that the modern student mind revolves around. These authoritative intimidations are assertions of attitude coming from the teachers, parents and students - these people being the most influential to the education system. It’s not like these are completely false statements at all; the economy is still recovering from 2008, fewer jobs are to be had, existing workers are retiring later and especially a growing number of high school graduates, out of societal imposition, choose to go to university creating an insanely competitive environment in comparison to previous decades. The university degree and ever-more so the quality of that degree is as well rising in importance as much as it is falling in value, as larger percentages of first-world populations are acquiring undergraduate degrees. The contemporary educational environment is one that cultivates mental illness through the increased importance of its unfortunate necessity in capitalistic society.
It is easy to be just a number in university, as it is much too easy to fall into a routine of a never-ending lonely loop. Waking up, going to class, coming home, (maybe) doing homework, eating a couple times a day, watching a movie, going to sleep becomes a rudimentary and rigidly lonesome life. You repeat this process daily, all with insurmountable expectations, creating a mountain of stress.
This increasing importance on educational performance is reaching breaking point for many students. With the pressure coming from all aspects of their lives, a student can become helpless in a sea of papers due the next morning. Any human-being can fall to overwhelming pressure, students are no different.
Supported by shocking national statistics, this illustrates a university experience that entails a life of limited fun in fall to the need to devote as much time to educational performance at the expense of human saneness.
This is an epidemic with no clear cut solution in this capitalistic society. We can obviously start by building a stronger economy but all that is known is that mental health should always precede a mark given out by a Scantron machine.
People are plenty aware of mental illness in society, but without a physical image for the disease, mental illness thrives on its covertness.
It seems university students are falling to mental illness faster than they are graduating.
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Sonya Elongo
SHEC
I have a weird case of cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, I am the poster child of senioritis. All I want is to finish up my undergraduate degree and get on with the rest of my life. On the other hand, I am wholly unready to leave McMaster. While they seem diametrically opposed to one another, these feelings stem from a common source: my impending graduation.
One thing that helped me to make sense of these feelings was to allow myself to feel and be scared by them. This was the first step I needed to take in order to parse my thoughts and feelings. While this constant reflection helped me to figure out some things, I also felt suffocated by my thoughts. After this, the natural step was to talk through my feelings with other people. This allowed me to gain a new perspective on everything I was feeling. What we experience is so narrow and specific that you can truly learn so much from just exploring your frame-of-mind with other people.
In your final year, there is huge pressure to have already figured out what you want to do with your life. For those who aren’t quite there yet, it can be incredibly scary and overwhelming. There also exist the ever looming “what ifs.” What if you don’t get in? What if what you thought you wanted to do is not actually for you? What if you won’t make enough to have a stable future? This then leads into the conflict between doing something practical and secure while also fulfilling your passions. While the two aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, it can be a fine line to toe.
When you have a case of the Novembers, have thesis work piling up, and have applications up to your ears, worrying about what happens after graduation can be overwhelming. Taking care of your mental health is key and can help you sort out your feelings. There are several venues available where you can talk through your feelings, varying from peer-based to more professional services.
SHEC provides a variety of resources including confidential peer support. This service is available every Monday to Friday during daytime hours in MUSC 202. If you are seeking help after hours or on the weekend, the MSU Peer Support Line is a great resource. This phone line is staffed by McMaster students and is confidential. The volunteers at SHEC and PSL are trained to be knowledgeable about a wide variety of issues and will provide emotional support, information and referrals.
If peer support is not up your alley, professional counselling may be better suited to help explore your problems. The Student Wellness Centre (SWC) at McMaster offers a professional counselling service. Unfortunately wait times for an appointment with a counsellor at the SWC can be very long, especially during stress-intense times of the school year. One easily accessible alternative to the SWC is Good2Talk. Aiming to provide “free, professional and anonymous support for students in Ontario”, Good2Talk is a bilingual phone line run by the provincial government specifically for post-secondary students. This service is available 365/24/7 and provides local referrals in addition to counselling.
One way of taking care of your mental health that doesn’t necessarily include talking out your feelings with someone, is practicing self-care. While this is easier said than done, eating properly, sleeping a sufficient amount, and exercise can make a huge difference in how you feel. Self-reflection through writing in a journal, practicing meditation and creating art can all contribute to a better understanding of what is going on in your life. Remember that this is a scary and tumultuous period of time and that taking the time to be gentle with yourself is worth it.
Farzeen Foda
Senior News Editor
On March 13, McMaster University hosted a Mental Health Symposium to evaluate the mental health efforts across campus. The event featured speakers from key players in combating student mental health issues.
Dr. Debbie Nifakis, associate director of counseling for McMaster’s Student Wellness Centre (SWC), John Starzynski, president of the Mood Disorders Society of Canada and Dan Johnson of The Jack Project at Kids Help Phone were among the speakers present at the event.
To evaluate current efforts at McMaster and consider alternate options, seven panelists, including the speakers, expressed their perspectives. In addition to the speakers, the panelists included Deb Earl, mental health team nurse for SWC, Siobhan Stewart, McMaster Students Union (MSU) president-elect, Mariette Lee, a McMaster student, Dr. Allan McFarlane, professor emeritus in the department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neuroscience and Heidi Muller of Student Conduct an Community Standards.
Panelists and speakers discussed the state of the mental health support currently available on the McMaster campus.
It has been noted that such services available on campus are of exceptional standard already, but are hindered by the lack of student awareness, noted Allan Fein, wellness education coordinator for the SWC. Discussions sought to “get some of the voices on campus together,” he said.
He further explained that the event looked at ways of building awareness about the services available to students battling difficulties in any domain of university life as those often translate into adverse mental health outcomes. Fein expressed that one untapped avenue of communication with the student body appears to be McMaster student cards, which are a staple item for all students.
Keeping vital contact information on student cards may be a simple way to build awareness to such services as the Student Wellness Centre.
The Jack Project at Kids Help Phone was initiated by the father of Jack Windeler, a Queen’s University student, who in 2010 took his own life in his battle against mental illness. The group focuses on the transition from high school to university.
It was noted that early intervention programs might be an effective measure to help students feel better connected to their new surroundings. While some are already in place, they may be improved and/or better publicized. These efforts are aimed at “catching students before they fall through the cracks of the system,” said Melissa Fernandes, wellness education assistant for SWC.
Proposals to improve mental health services on campus were a key element of Stewart’s election campaign and include the establishment of an after-hours peer support line, fall break, and implement training for mental illness following the LGBTQ Positive Space Training model.
The event marks neither a starting point or an ending point in campus mental health efforts, noted Fein. Given the strong foundation in place already, there remains potential for refinement in policies and publicity of services.
Considerations proposed at the event included revisions to policies pertaining to voluntary and involuntary university dropout.
Currently, students forced to take leave from university either by choice or force are faced with immense difficulty when they try to return to their studies. The time off reflects negatively as a result of the current policy framework, thus often restricting re-entry for such students, noted Fein and Fernandes.
The next steps at this time involve consolidating the ideas that came out of the symposium and look to the improvement of current services and the allocation of new recommendations to those parties on campus that can affect the envisioned change.
