How do you feel when you secure admission to your preferred academic program in your “dream” city? Besides your parents being optimistic about you succeeding in the new environment upon joining college, you always feel thrilled to get a chance to live alone or with your peer(s), as this would allow you to explore fun activities. However, during this period, you’ll Experience social, economic, and academic challenges. Notable examples include balancing a tight budget and encountering cultural shocks. As a consequence, approximately 14% (one in seven) of individuals aged 10 to 19 years unknowingly struggle with mental health disorders. Based on many countries’ censuses, almost all of these demographics are students. Owing to the challenges posed by mental disorders, pertinent educational stakeholders are championing the implementation or amendment of policies that will help in developing feasible solutions.
Students’ mental well-being depends on the development of their emotional and social habits during adolescence. These include but are not limited to understanding how to manage emotions, working out regularly, and adopting healthy sleeping patterns, in addition to acquiring interpersonal, problem-solving, and coping skills. While at school, balancing activities that lead to developing these behaviors and academics might be challenging. For example, if you physically exercise every day except for weekends, you won’t have sufficient time for doing assignments and homework. Therefore, colleges in the United States and abroad should
consider implementing policies that train students to use technologies such as those on this website in their research.
Mental Health Issues and Policy Solutions
Adolescents, especially those in college, are highly predisposed to emotional disorders. Even though the cause of anxiety maladies remains ambiguous, it often emanates from worries and fears attributable to bullying or underperformance in class. Today, approximately 2.8% and 1.1% of 15-19 and 10-14 years-old adolescents, respectively, experience symptoms of this disorder. This mental health issue, coupled with depression, negatively impacts school attendance. If it leads to social withdrawal, a student will likely feel lonely and isolated.
This mental issue is highly predominant in England, as approximately 7.6 million people are on the National Health Service’s waiting list. This gap in providing required medical assistance to the general population underscores the predicaments that individuals experience in colleges. For instance, only students aged 18 years and below can access child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS). Due to this policy, the UK government allocates financial resources to these demographics. However, college students, constituting a majority of older teenagers, are at high risk of developing mental health disorders, as attaining the age of 18 doesn’t guarantee maturity. Even scientific explorations have revealed that the human brain continues developing up to the mid-20s.
Based on these evidence-based findings, legislators in the UK and worldwide should amend policies restricting access to mental health services to age 18 years. What’s more, pertinent stakeholders worldwide should obligate the inclusion of psychological support into core curricula. This strategy will help instructors learn the ins and outs of dealing with mental issues. For example, a teacher can encourage students to express their feelings and thoughts through journaling, music, and art. While you cannot escape the episodes of anxiety in college, developing the required coping strategies is necessary.
While education at all levels remains the greatest equalizer, its impact reduces when students from low socio-economic status join colleges under sponsorships with set conditions. For instance, if you keep worrying about your parents missing a meal, you can’t entirely focus in class. Due to this verdict, key educational stakeholders must amend Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which influences standards, practice, benchmarks, and budgets for learning institutions. In particular, this policy advocates for additional funding to schools with many students from low socio-economic status. However, in case these learning institutions fail to achieve “adequate yearly progress,” their financial resource allocations are reduced significantly. It means that this act won’t have long term impact as education sponsorship alone for students from families struggling with poverty is never enough.
Generally speaking, many learning institutions in the US, UK, and worldwide depend on different policies to curb mental health issues. However, legislative restructuring or addition is necessary to fill the emerging gaps. For example, eradicating the age limit for accessing mental health services among students is obligatory. Tailoring educational policies to fit specific needs of students will foster mental well-being worldwide.
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