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Editor’s Note: The content in this issue deals heavily with mental health, anxiety, depression and suicide, which may be difficult or triggering for some readers.
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For the past few years, mental health has become a buzzword in our society. From burned out students at SIU to 2020 Tokyo Olympic gymnasts, people are beginning to speak up about their mental health and the importance of mental health to their overall wellbeing, but it hasn’t always been this way.
Until more recent years, mental health had been stigmatized and often vilified. When I started receiving treatments for anxiety as a senior in high school, I realized I was incredibly privileged to have grown up in a society where that was possible, but even now, mental health is still widely under-discussed and sometimes seen as taboo. Not a topic for the dinner table.
The purpose of this edition of the Daily Egyptian is to dive into these topics that are uncomfortable and difficult to speak about in order to shed some much needed light on the issue of mental health.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, “Nearly one in five U.S. adults live with a mental illness.”
With that many people experiencing a mental illness, ranging from anxiety and depression to bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, it is important to be able to have open dialogue about the subject to destigmatize mental illnesses and gain a better understanding of how mental health impacts an individual.
Dr. Jeffrey Kellogg, a practicing clinical child psychologist and professor at SIU, said in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become an even more relevant issue as many people experienced an increase of symptoms of depression and
“We were experiencing this pandemic and that had a profound impact on all of us, and that’s increased levels of anxiety across the board, it’s increased levels of depression across the board,” Kellogg said. “So it’s kind of like the new normal is that more people are experiencing significant amounts of anxiety and depression.”
Kids, too, are feeling the weight of the pandemic, with over “200,000 kids [losing] a parent or primary caregiver to COVID,” Kellogg said.
When a person experiences depression or anxiety, it doesn’t simply make the person sad or nervous. It can impact everything from a person’s ability to study and work to their digestive system, says Kellogg.
“I think mental health is pervasive,” Kellog said. “It affects us in everything we do, and depending on how much disruption our emotions are, or if we have an anxiety disorder or a depression disorder or just normal reactions to life stresses, it can interfere and affect almost everything… It’s not a separate entity, it’s all one and the same. ”
But the walls around mental health and illness are slowly beginning to break down as awareness and understanding spreads about the issue, and part of this is thanks to the help of social media.
“One of the nice things about media and social media and those resources is there’s so many things available to us from our phones,” Kellogg said.
Social media has played a major role in my own mental health journey. When I was in high school, I was a dedicated fan of Hank and John Green’s YouTube channel, Vlogbrothers, where I was first introduced to someone else who had anxiety. After the release of his book, “Turtles All the Way Down,” in
which the main character deals with anxiety and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), John Green often spoke about his own experience with anxiety and OCD.
In a 2018 interview on 60 Minutes, John Green described how his thoughts spiral after an anxious thought, “Instead of being able to move on to a second thought, that thought just expands and expands and expands and expands, and then I use compulsive behaviors to try to manage the worry and the overwhelmedness that that thought causes me.”
I immediately felt connected with what he said. My anxiety would often look something like this in high school: I would feel stressed because of an upcoming test in anatomy and physiology and it would make the right side of my stomach cramp, then I would notice my stomach cramping and have the thought that maybe I am experiencing appendicitis. That would begin a spiral and I would start panicking. At this point, I would start to feel lightheaded and very hot and clammy, which would only make me more convinced that I had appendicitis. After that, I would try to calm myself down by searching on my phone for what can cause stomach cramping on your sides, and the first thing that pops up is appendicitis.
I sometimes spent hours debating whether I should tell my parents because I couldn’t tell if I had a real or serious problem or if it was just me panicking. Hearing someone else who has gone through those same feelings felt incredibly validating and I began to feel much less isolated.
Then, once I began to understand the emotions I was feeling, the more I was able to work towards finding ways of helping my anxiety and working through spirals and panic attacks.
If you or someone you know is thinking of self-harming, help is just three digits away on your phone. The Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is now reachable by call or text at 988. Chat services are available through the service’s website. Help is available in more than 240 languages and there are services for the hearing impaired by dialing 711 then 988.
“When people call, text, or chat 988, they will be connected to trained counselors that are part of the existing Lifeline network,” the website says. “These trained counselors will listen, understand how their problems are affecting them, provide support, and connect them to resources if necessary.”
The National Suicide Hotline Designation Act, federal legislation designating 988 as the three-digit dialing code for the Lifeline, was signed into law in October 2020.
“This triumph was the outcome of many years of activism by the
mental health community for the creation of an easy-to-remember telephone number that would increase accessibility of the Lifeline,” the service says.
According to the CDC, there were 45,979 deaths by suicide in 2020, the most recent data available. That is one death every 11 minutes. The Lifeline says for every death, another 316 people seriously consider suicide.
The Lifeline says it has received more than 23 million contacts from people in distress, “looking for help when they need it most.” Of those, nearly 90,000 calls originated in Illinois. People who contact the lifeline are counselled immediately and then referred to support services available nearby their location.
The Lifeline lists the following as warning signs that someone may be considering suicide.
Talking about wanting to die or to kill themselves
Looking for a way to kill
themselves, like searching online or buying a gun
Talking about feeling hopeless or having no reason to live
Talking about feeling trapped or in unbearable pain
Talking about being a burden to others
Increasing the use of alcohol or drugs
Acting anxious or agitated; behaving recklessly Sleeping too little or too much Withdrawing or isolating themselves
Showing rage or talking about seeking revenge
Extreme mood swings
If you fear someone you know may be thinking of taking their own life, you can also utilize 988 to get guidance.
WilliAm Box wbox@dailyegyptian.com
The modern world is full of distractions. It’s jam-packed with media and technology whose sole function, as far as their manufacturers are concerned, is to get you to focus on them to the detriment of everything else.
Advertising is consistently one of the biggest expenditures of any company large enough to understand the importance of it, from Apple to Home Depot and everything in between; and the primary function of the $154 billion industry is to break down into a science the concept of holding the attention of the masses and conditioning them to think of them before any competitors.
While many of the legal battles regarding ethical advertising and the standards we now hold businesses to have come as a result, legality has not yet had time to catch up with the digital age, allowing for the proliferation of systems like Facebook which, in recent years, has been the subject of leaks and whistleblowers which have exposed practices related to amplifying misinformation, intentionally making their platform as addicting as possible and other unethical practices.
Video games in recent years have borrowed heavily from the mobile gaming market and begun to utilize loot boxes and other gambling elements, intentionally exposing their often underage audiences in an effort to increase their interaction with the game in an unhealthy,
addictive way.
The concept of a time sink is a game or other activity that produces little to no tangible rewards, which accurately describes these new forms of entertainment. But the way they keep the user interested is by providing a positive feedback loop within the brain and trying to get it to associate the excitatory response of the brain to novelty with their platform or product.
The brain releases chemicals associated with pleasure and excitement at the new experience and seeks out more of it, this creates the natural feedback response rewarding curiosity and, as is often exploited, can create addictive behavior in pursuit of these novel experiences. This is where stories of children stealing their parents’ money for video games often come to the forefront of conversation.
As someone who struggles with executive dysfunction, a condition characterized by a difficulty controlling executive functioning, namely working memory, cognitive flexibility and inhibition control, the world we find ourselves in now is, to me, a minefield of time sinks.
The ability to easily swap from task to task and to tackle boring assignments is one of the key aspects of attending academia and my already reduced ability to self-regulate has led to problems developing for as long as I’ve been attending school and particularly after taking a few years to work before coming back to college.
I have significant difficulty getting started on a task, but I have no issue
focusing on that task for hours at a time when I feel I’m doing well at it. But, for my part, it can sometimes take days, weeks or even months to work up the motivation to begin a task, resulting in problems making deadlines and sticking to desperately needed schedules. In short, schooling is difficult for me, especially with the delayed gratification associated with waiting years for a degree.
I’ve found I feel much more motivated when it comes to a workplace as opposed to a classroom though, mainly because of the money acting as a motivating factor. But my favorite job I’ve held isn’t my favorite because it paid the most (it did not) or because it was the most enriching (it wasn’t) but because I was free to move and do tasks at the same time.
I worked as an assistant manager at the bowling alley in my hometown, and carrying out the day to day chores of keeping the stockroom full and the floors clean acted as a good outlet for my energy every day. While I was engaged in the physical actions of lifting and pulling and pushing, my mind was free to wander and ask questions of myself and the world around me.
Kinesthetic learning, according to Houghton University, is a “style that requires you to manipulate or touch material to learn.” They recommend writing or creating tools to help you learn information like designing charts or creating models.
As a kid in middle school, I found writing down my notes helped me memorize the information easily, as the association of writing and
thinking about the subject helped to tie the two together in my mind and always helped more than just sitting and reviewing material for hours on end.
When I left school to go into the workforce, it was, as expected, much easier to focus on the tasks at hand and motivation wasn’t really an issue. I was able to do well for myself, but in February of 2021 I moved to San Diego and a few days later the job I managed to find at Greenpeace let me go as the reality of the Covid-19 pandemic was just setting in.
After months of not doing anything and being unable to find a job, I decided to go back to school and first finish my associate’s degrees from my first attempt at college.
I found that typing notes and outlines of the chapters I would read helped me to recall the information I needed, but I still found myself unable to always focus my attention on my classes as opposed to any of the multitude of time sinks around me every day, especially video games and their manufactured hits of novelty and interactivity.
I managed to achieve those two degrees, but since starting at the university level, I’ve found it ever more difficult to break away from the daily distractions of social media and video games as routines set in and it becomes harder to dislodge the bad habits that develop.
Fortunately, I’ve been lucky to have understanding instructors who may overlook my bad routine of cramming assignments and tests into the last few weeks of the semester, but these bad habits,
which formed due to a combination of difficulty with impulse control and allowing myself to get caught up with hobbies that explicitly prey on that weakness to maximize that screen time.
To those who may be struggling with focusing If you want my advice, the best thing you can do is try to develop a healthier relationship with the technology you have the most issue with.
Limit screen time to a certain time of day or save it as a reward for yourself for completing a task. Keep in mind your biggest time sinks and save those for the end of the day so you don’t get caught up with them when you have other tasks to tackle. Be mindful of yourself while you’re using the media you’re using and don’t be afraid to ask for help with being aware of how much time you’re spending on your particular time sink.
The modern Internet and all its affiliated extensions are full of entertainment at the tap of a finger, but now we run the risk of being overwhelmed by all the easily accessible stimulation around us at any given moment.
For those of us struggling with focus in this brave new world, be strong. It may not get much easier, but we can control our environment and make it easier for ourselves if we’re mindful and careful with the tools we have available to us.
Staff reporter William Box can be reached at wbox@ dailyegyptian.com or on Twitter at @ William17455137.
Janiyah Gaston | @Janiyah reports
Mental health and how it should be handled has been a talked about topic in America for years, especially when it comes to young adults. In 2018, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health released a report that found that about 433,000 African Americans between the ages of 18-25 struggle with major depressive episodes.
Thomas Boyd, a fifth-year student majoring in computer science, said he was told that college would be similar to high school if he did his homework and participated in clubs.
“The academic part has changed a lot. I feel like it’s a lot harder to go out, especially when you’re constantly focused on homework and me as an engineering major,” Boyd said.
[...] “But it’s not enough to do the homework and go to the class. You also have to spend an hour or two a day going over the course material, so you’re prepared, because at the end of the day when we go to college it is for us to get that experience.”
Making sure you split up your time between homework and other aspects of your life is important, because it can be overwhelming when you are a Black person in the STEM field. Most of the time it can feel that you need to put in double the work when you are in the minority, he said.
Lydia Bently, a graduate of Vanderbilt University, wrote the dissertation Black College Students’ Choice of STEM Major: an analysis of their perceptions and experiences in their intended STEM pathways. She talks about what are some of the reasons Black college
students choose to stay or leave the STEM field and what challenges they may face.
A few of the sources Bently uses in their research state that many students of color felt that they would go unheard in the classroom and have to deal with microaggressions from, not only classmates, but faculty and staff.
When it came to Boyd’s experience with SIU’s mental health services, he said the resources offered helped him a lot.
“I started going [to therapy] around, like, right before the time of the waiting list. So I did have someone to speak to. [...] she was a great lady, she helped me out. But I was paired with a lady who was not African American or someone who would have personally understood some of the struggles that I was going through, which is a huge part of
therapy,” he said.
Kiley Corinthians Burns, a first-year student studying education, said, although her mom encouraged her to come to SIU because it was diverse, her first few weeks of school did not really reflect that.
“It just seemed like everyone else knew what they wanted to do, and I didn’t. And I kind of felt like I didn’t know who to talk to about, like, my interests and stuff,” she said.
She said a good amount of older people in the Black community’s views on college are that you go to college for four years; once you get to graduate, you get a good job, but it is much more than that.
“Pushing a kid through college and they themselves don’t know what they were wanting to do is a struggle itself that costs money as well. People saying ‘tough it out,’ well, you have to set that child up to be able to, because if they don’t have the financial abilities to do so and they’re in these institutions, and they’ve taken all these loans thinking that ‘oh, as soon as I get the job, I’ll be able to pay it back’. They get themselves in a deeper hole,” Burns said.
When parents focus on making sure their children go to college and only think about the potential money they could possibly make and do not consider the financial responsibility of the student, it can negatively affect that student’s mental health, she said.
While students at predominantly white institutions (PWIs) like SIU may not always find help from people who share their experiences, students at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) say it helps when they can talk to therapists with the same backgrounds.
Lauren Evans, a first-year pharmacy student at Xavier University Louisiana, said when it came to mental health, her family encouraged her to take care of herself.
“My mom is a therapist, so
she’s always really understood the impact of mental health and really been an advocate for me. She’s actually the reason I even started therapy in the first place because she knows me,” Evans said. “My sophomore year I brought a car to get this. She was, like, ‘if you don’t sign up for therapy you’re not bringing the car the next semester.’ So she, kind of, recognizes, like, this is hard and you need to, like, reach out for the assistance that’s available.”
Evans said, when it comes to the mental health services at school, they are equally as helpful, everything from the testing services to events on campus and a certain amount of free on-campus therapy sessions.
One of the few things that has helped her mental state while being in college is the school having a high Black population, especially in the Wellness Center, Evans said.
“So I think that’s another aspect that made me more comfortable with therapy, because I knew walking in that whoever I ended up with, I was gonna relate to on that sense of that we are the same race and we are both women and I think that really helps knowing that someone understands you,” she said.
M’Kenzie Lumas-Harmon, a fourth-year at Spelman College, said before she came to college, she did not think about her mental health that much.
“I didn’t think it was an issue or something that I really needed to care about. But coming into college, especially being at a Black college, they really emphasize the fact that like, being at Spelman is this once-in-a-lifetime thing we’re never going to get this time back,” she said
She said, since now that she is thinking about her health a little more, she makes time to keep a detailed schedule of her day, stay involved on campus and find time to relax.
Staff reporter Janiyah Gaston can be reached at jgaston@ dailyegyptian.com or on Instagram @janiyah_reports.
In the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for mental health care providers has become much more relevant in our society as people across the world began to face overwhelming amounts of loss, financial insecurity and general uncertainty in the world.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “Symptoms of anxiety disorder and depressive disorder increased considerably in the United States during April–June of 2020, compared with the same period in 2019.”
Their research found that about 40% of the adult population in the U.S. reported a mental or behavioral health condition since the pandemic, with more than 10% reporting seriously considering suicide within 30 days prior to their survey.
This increase of mental health issues and awareness created a high demand for mental health providers, but it was met with an insufficient number of providers.
According to an article by the Association of American Medical Colleges, more than 150 million people already live in an area that is considered to have a shortage of mental health professionals.
“Within a few years, the country will be short between 14,280 and 31,109 psychiatrists, and psychologists, social workers and others will be overextended as well,” the article said.
The lack of providers has impacted many
different communities, from schools to the workplace, all have felt the effect of the shortage.
“The truth is, we don’t have enough providers,” said Dr. Jeffrey Kellogg, a clinical child psychologist and professor at SIU. “And so the whole mental health system has been under duress just to try and have enough providers in the midst of having enough hours in the day to see people.”
The justice system has felt the weight of the shortage as well. Dr. Robert “Bob” Morgan, the dean of the College of Health and Human Services at SIU and researcher of mental health and criminal risk, said psychotherapeutic interventions have been proven to be most effective in treating justiceinvolved individuals, but jails and prisons don’t currently have the capacity to provide those services.
“There’s more inmates than there are treatment providers,” Morgan said.
But where have all the therapists gone?
The answer is complicated, said Dr. Abby Bilderback, the director of Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) and the associate director of the Student Health Services at SIU.
“First and foremost is that there were a lot of changes made to provider eligibility standards when COVID hit,” Bilderback said.
During the pandemic, some states permitted licensed providers to provide telehealth services to clients outside of their state. This opened up their licensing to a much larger audience and created an opportunity for many providers to
go into private practice.
Mental health providers also faced the same stressors the rest of the country was struggling to cope with. Just as the rest of the world dealt with loss of friends and family and stability and connection, so did therapists.
The field itself can be a mentally straining one to enter, and with the addition of the anxiety and sadness caused by the pandemic, it isn’t difficult to see how it can cause one to feel motivated to leave the profession.
“Mental health providers are humans as well and, be it COVID or other life stressors, I think that some folks pivoted in terms of their profession, based on their own needs and their own stress levels and some of those things,” Bilderback said. “So, there were a lot of people leaving the field in addition to transitioning to private practice.”
The training and education for mental health providers has changed over the years as well, leading to fewer providers entering the workforce at a more consistent rate.
“I think our training cycles are slow and too small,” Kellogg said. “ We’re not training enough providers, and we’re not training them fast enough.”
According to Kellogg, psychologists require around ten years of university training and the training is becoming more extensive as new developments arise in the field.
“We have a PhD program at Southern, critical child and critical adult psychology, that used to be three years, now it’s closer to five years,” Kellogg said.
Limited faculty has contributed to delayed
programs as well. The number of students a program can accept has decreased because there aren’t enough teachers to teach them.
These changes have major impacts on the individuals seeking care, including communities such as people of color and LGBT+.
“If you think about a marginalized group, there’s going to be more barriers to accessing treatment,” Bilderback said. “And so when there’s already barriers in place, an increased number of barriers in place, if you have fewer options or fewer providers, that’s just going to exacerbate some of those barriers that are in place.”
However, one good thing that came from the COVID-19 pandemic was the popularization and expansion of telehealth services. It has opened up services to a larger number of people who may not have had access to counseling and therapy in the past as well as make it more convenient and comfortable for some to seek services.
While there is still a lot of progress to make in providing mental health care to those who need it, expanding society’s understanding and access to care has come a long way from what it used to be.
“If someone’s considering looking for treatment, telehealth services, working with their medical provider could be a good option, but there’s lots of different ways to receive mental health treatment,” Bilderback said.
Editor-in-Cheif Sophie Whitten can be reached at swhitten@dailyegyptian.com or @sophiewhitten_
Are
CAPS counselors provide supportive, affirmative, trauma-informed, and confidential services to students. We work with diverse students on a wide range of presenting issues and utilize treatment techniques based individual needs. Our services include:
Same Day Services
Individual Counseling
Group Counseling
Crisis Services
Gender-Based Violence Services
Alcohol and Other Drugs
Couples Counseling
Dialectical Behavior Therapy Program
Eating Disordered Outpatient Program
SIU Mandatory Suicide Assessment
CAPS counselors are here to support you! SIU Students can access mental health counseling by calling 618/453-5371 Monday through Friday 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays 12:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. (excluding university closures) or by walking into any of our locations on campus.
For more information about CAPS, please visit shc.siu.edu/counseling
Wellness and Health Promotion Services provides health promotion and prevention education to equip students with the skills needed to make effective choices regarding their health and wellbeing. We offer presentations and workshops on a variety of topics, including:
Resilience and Coping Skills
Alcohol and Other Drugs
Feeling stressed? The Dawg Lounge is our free and open stress management lounge for students, offering three themed relaxation rooms with massage chairs, art and coping tools, and support animals! We also offer monthly Downward Dog yoga sessions and Calming Craft activities. For a schedule of events and dog days in the Dawg Lounge, or to request a presentation, visit shc.siu.edu
Confidential Advising Services is dedicated to providing survivor-centered assistance to SIU students that have experienced sexual harassment, sexual misconduct, sexual assault, dating violence, domestic violence, or stalking. Call 618/536-4441 or email confidentialadvisor@siu.edu.
When talking about mental health struggles, sometimes people tend to forget that there’s no certain age that is immune to struggling, it affects everyone.
“Experiences of trauma are the highest percentage of folks that we serve here at SIU but also really represents a high population in the broader community as well,” Abigail Bilderback, director of Counseling and Psychological services (CAPS) at SIU said.
As a society, we tend to focus on the teenagers/young adults struggling with mental health, but the older generation’s mental struggles are oftentimes overlooked.
Bilderback named intersectionality and intersecting identities as other factors that contribute to mental health discussions and stigma. Even ways “family members or even community members have talked about or not talked about mental health growing up,” Bilderback said.
It’s important to focus on the
older generations especially because certain personality disorders may not show symptoms until over the age of 18 as well as certain symptoms need to show for a certain amount of time in order to make a correct diagnosis.
“For example, first onset of psychosis for psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia are often in early to mid 20s,” Bilderback said.
Generational differences such as what kind of stage of development you’re at in life, your age, different relationships with families can definitely affect the support resources and access to treatment for mental health struggles.
“For folks that are a little older, you know, again, you have a little bit more autonomy, however, there still are lots of barriers to accessing care, especially for mental health services for folks, you know, that are adults and so that might be you know, the cost of treatment, it might be the ability to get yourself transported to a treatment facility,” Bilderback said.
A few examples of barriers for older people struggling to get the help they need include having to
wait on waitlists to get the treatment they need, and generational differences where some people can’t recognize or identify what they’re experiencing.
A few of the diagnoses that have been related to trauma include PTSD, mood disorders like depression/anxiety, and personality disorders.
“And I think that I would be remiss not to mention intersectionality right now, as we talk about, you know, different generations and age differences,” Bilderback said.
A few reasons the older generation doesn’t talk as much about mental health struggles are that they think it’s a private issue so they don’t want to look for support or burden anyone, some people just don’t have access to care, and some people simply don’t trust the support systems, she said.
Bilderback encourages anyone who is struggling or knows someone who is struggling to call the National Suicide Hotline at 9-8-8. The hotline is available 24/7,
healthy to express those feelings,” Kellogg said.
nationally.
If you feel like you may be struggling, but need help figuring out what’s wrong, you can talk with mental health providers, friends, family, doctor, even churches if you choose.
“There’s lots of different resources that folks can rely on.,” Bilderback said. “I think it’s important to give Counseling and Psychological Services a plug here as well that we have a team of incredibly caring professional peers that can help support the students through any range of mental health concerns. And so, students here at SIU have access to incredible care, through Student Health Services and Counseling and Psychological Services.”
If you are starting to notice signs of mental health struggles, whether it’s with you, or friends/ family members, make sure to take good care of the people you care about, Bilderback said.
News reporter Carolyn Dickte can be reached at carolynd@dailyegyptian.com.
My number one go-to for coping with anxiety is walking. I walk almost every day and any time that I begin to feel even remotely anxious. When I’m walking, I feel like I have more power over my thoughts, that I can think through them and rationalize them. When I am sitting and anxious, the only thing I can do is sit and think, but when I’m moving, it feels like I am actively walking towards clearer thoughts.
Kellogg suggests that another way you can cope with anxiety or depression is through apps on your phone that focus on mindfulness.
“There’s one by an Australian psychologist, it’s called Smiling Mind. It’s a free application and it’s a very sophisticated application,” Kellogg said. “It has modules for all sorts of age groups, kids as well as adults, and what’s nice about the application is it’s free… I’ve used it with clients and some of my grad students have used it.”
These resources and communities combined with education about mental health have helped to erase the stigma surrounding it.
“If you go back to the 50s and sometimes even the 60s, you didn’t tell people yet about your mental illness or mental issues,” Kellogg said. “I think over those couple of decades, the language has changed, has become less stigmatized and people are just more educated and more psychologically minded and recognize it’s not something to be ashamed of.”
He made it clear that everyone deals with stress, the difference is how much stress a person feels and how it affects them, so it is important to be accepting of stress in our lives so that we can find ways of managing it.
“I think our grade schools and our high schools are taking more of an active interest in teaching kids coping strategies, teaching kids about their emotions, or how to try and break down some cultural, and social barriers to recognizing that people have feelings and it’s
With all of the advancements we have made, however, there is still a long way to go. From young men, to the LGBT+ community, and people of color, there are many underrecognized groups whose mental health is sometimes put aside.
Boys are often told from a young age that men don’t cry and this language can be damaging to a person struggling with mental illness. Educating people that mental illness is not a sign of weakness and that emotions are not something to be ashamed of helps people to understand that there is something that can be done to manage their mental health.
“We’ve got to start in preschool and grade school and teaching kids how to cope with stressors and teaching kids how to manage your emotions and giving kids voices when they need to have them, and that will have a ripple effect generations from now when they can do that,” Kellogg said. “We still have a lot of strong feelings within our culture in our society about these things, so it’s not an easy process. But quit telling kids they can’t cry. Quit teaching boys that men don’t cry.”
So if you are feeling anxiety or depression, know that you are not alone. You are allowed to feel these emotions and you are allowed to talk about them and express them. You do not have to feel shame for your mental health.
Most importantly, there are things you can do about your mental health. Find something that works for you. Try going for a walk, a mindfulness app, or consider speaking with a professional care provider. You are not alone, and there are people who are willing and passionate about supporting you.
Editor-in-Cheif Sophie Whitten can be reached at swhitten@dailyegyptian.com or @sophiewhitten_
When crime is portrayed in the media, whether in fictional television shows or national news, mental health is often tied with the motivations behind the individual committing the crime.
Were they depressed? Have bipolar disorder? Schizophrenia?
But how much of crime is actually caused by the individual’s mental health?
As it turns out, hardly any.
Dr. Robert “Bob” Morgan, the dean of the College of Health and Human Services at SIU, has researched treatment at the interface of mental health and criminal risk in justice-related issues as well as maintained a private practice for more than 20 years in forensic psychology before coming to SIU, and he says this is a major but common misconception in our society.
Among the people who experience mental health issues and illness, only a small percentage will ever commit a crime, and among individuals who do commit crime, only three to five percent are due to serious mental health issues according to the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority.
“Now, certainly we know that persons with mental illness are over represented in criminal justice systems, jails, prisons, probation, parole, but it’s not because mental health is a predictor or cause of crime,” Morgan said.
Dr. Tamara Kang, a professor at SIU who researched mental health in the justice system and the criminogenic needs, or factors that are predictive of reoffending, of individuals who commit crime, says that the things that influence people who are commit crime are the same things that influence people who are not involved in crime.
“One is family, another is peers, school and employment, your available leisure activities,” Kang said. “The one that doesn’t apply to everybody broadly, but it is a robust empirical predictor of recidivism is substance abuse, and then you have different things like personality characteristics or antisocial cognitions, and so sometimes this is things like criminal thinking, where you feel that you would fix or solve problems by committing crimes.”
A main focus of treating individuals in the justice system is to help change the people justice-involved individuals spend time with. The more a person spends time with other people that are engaged in criminal activity, the more likely they will commit a crime.
“When I’m doing trainings, I always give the example…For parents, if you want to know what your kid is doing, look at who they’re hanging out with,” Morgan said. “If your kid’s hanging out with the chess team, what are they doing with it? Probably do academic stuff. But if your kid is hanging out with the fringe group who’s involved in some antisocial activities and maybe running afoul of certain school rules, but possibly even the law, what’s your kid doing? Well, the same thing, probably.”
One way researchers have proven that mental health is not a factor in these criminogenic needs is by how individuals in the justice system have been treated in the past to re-enter the community.
“Historically, we would simply treat your mental health problems and expect that they would have less crime, not return to prison or jail, and we’ll be fine,” Morgan said. “And what we’ve found is, well, that doesn’t work.”
What the researchers are looking for is something called recidivism, or the likelihood of a justice-involved individual to reoffend, and what they have found is that treating mental health in isolation leaves out the treatment of a person’s criminogenic needs, making them susceptible to reoffending.
“If you have a specialized probation load, where you’re mandating someone to seek mental health treatment as part of their probation or parole requirements, but you’re not treating these criminogenic needs from the need principle, you wouldn’t actually reduce recidivism,” Kang said.
Some studies have found that individuals who have a specialized caseload can even have a higher likelihood of reoffending.
“But this is mostly because if you keep a closer eye on people, and you make them have more probation, mandated things they have to do, they’re more likely to get caught or fail, or somehow have a violation of probation and go back to court,” Kang said.
Today, instead of isolating mental health as part of the treatment for a crime, individuals in the justice system focus on addressing the criminogenic needs of the individual.
“We help them focus on associating with people that are law abiding,” Morgan said. “They’re pro-social, they’re responsible and they’re not engaged in crime.”
This doesn’t mean mental health is left out of the system. While it has been established
that mental health is rarely ever the cause of crime, it can still expose individuals to situations to have criminogenic needs.
“If you have someone with a mental illness and they’re also abusing substances, it’s not the mental illness that would actually cause a crime, but those that are abusing substances in order to get money might commit property crimes or things like that to fuel their lifestyle or their habits,” Kang said.
Kang describes this as an indirect relationship, where mental illness may not be what causes the crime itself, but it doesn’t create problems that interact with the criminogenic needs that can cause harm and crime.
“It does complicate our ability to target other things like employment, like if you’re having a hard time going to work because you’re depressed or if you’re having a hard time concentrating during interventions or developing risk management plans because you’re dealing with hallucinations or anxiety,” Kang said.
Mental health also impacts justice-involved individuals who may not have been suffering from mental health issues before being incarcerated. Incarceration can be incredibly stressful of a justice-involved individual. They lose their jobs, their friends and family,
and they are often treated as an inmate and not a person with feelings and emotions. The transition can be a major cause of depression or anxiety.
“If you have people that don’t even see you as a person but see you as an inmate, you can really, a lot of the research has found, they feel doomed to be deviant, meaning ‘why should I even try,’” Kang said.
Persons involved in the justice system feel the same helplessness as they re-enter the community as well.
“Once you’re released, you have nothing. Think about not having a bank account, not having a driver’s license, you’re barely given any money… Think of how overwhelming that must be to have nothing,” Kang said. “Also, you don’t have much money so you’re forced to live in low-income housing, where you’re definitely not associating all the time with people that are making great decisions. I think people really misunderstand how difficult that can be and that type of stress can wear on you… a lot of people that deal with struggles do develop mental health symptoms or they do even develop a mental illness.”
The relationship between mental health and crime is complicated, but Kang makes it clear that it’s alright to feel confused.
“The field is often pretty harsh to the public about beliefs that maybe do not necessarily agree with what the research has found,” Kang said. “And I do want to say that it makes a lot of sense and I think it’s important for people that read things in the newspaper to understand that researchers don’t do a good job of disseminating knowledge… So a lot of the misunderstandings that come from the relationship between mental illness and crime has nothing to do so much with the public, but it does have something to do with community outreach and things that researchers can do.”
Ultimately, the research has shown that while mental illness may play a role in creating opportunities for more types of criminogenic needs, there are a very small percentage of crimes that are committed because of an individual’s mental illness.
“It’s complicated, it’s easy to misunderstand and really,” Kang said, “if someone believes that mental illness is causal of crime, it doesn’t mean they’re stupid or ignorant… it’s a very easy thing to sort of feel that that’s the connection.”
Staff reporter Sophie Whitten can be reached at swhitten@ dailyegyptian.com. To stay up to date with all your Southern Illinois News follow the Daily Egyptian on Facebook and Twitter.
“Imma just pray about it;” “I’m not crazy;” “I’m not weak.”
Phrases like that are common among people of color for whom mental health issues carry a stigma that requires those suffering to think it’s all about mind over matter.
In households of Black Americans, mental health issues are rarely acknowledged. If you’re depressed, relatives accuse you of being lazy and assume a better work ethic would fix your problem; if you’re unhappy and start crying, they frequently answer with “I’ll give you something to cry about.”
Many parents hardly notice the days when you’re down and alone and the only thing you hear is your heartbeat. Being tough for too long and frequently thinking about your issues leads to looking for affection and approval in all the wrong places, such as looking at teachers as mother figures and coaches as father figures.
Stephine Sanders, a second year graduate student in the counseling program, talks about growing up living with a father with PTSD who was treated different because of this disorder
“I think people with mental health disorders experience a lot of stigmas in society which is unfair,” she said.
Sanders says when she was growing up, her family did not take mental health issues seriously.
“I remember when I was a teenager, I had a lot of mental health disorders that I could not directly diagnose or had a hard time positively coping with mental health,” she said.
Mental health disorders are connected with a twofold increase in the likelihood of dropping out of college without graduating, and mental health difficulties throughout college are predictive of lower academic success.
Today’s college students manage a perplexing number of obstacles, including homework, relationships, food/housing insecurity, money, extracurriculars, and adjusting to course work and campus life.
“In 2020–2021, >60% of students met criteria for one or more mental health problems, a nearly 50% increase from 2013.
Mental health worsened among all groups over the study period,” according to the Journal of Affective Disorders.
Instead of getting help, college students of color frequently turn to poor coping techniques for these mental health issues. Oversleeping is a harmful coping strategy used by college students; as a result, they will start to miss class and perform poorly. The most typical of them is using too much alcohol or drugs. They can also help to dull feelings of pain and negative thoughts that are being purposely avoided. Excessive use of stimulants and depressants can cause major health issues, addiction, overdose and even death.
There are many things you may do on your own to combat depression or mental health concerns even though taking prescription medicine and attending therapy can be very beneficial. Your physical activity, way of life and mindset are all treatments and effective coping methods.
Steven Gear, a Ph.D. student, works for CAPS and elaborates on
the healthy coping mechanisms that students might adopt, beginning with combating negative ideas.
“When you’re dealing with depression or mental health concerns, you tend to go to the worst possible conclusions or thoughts. You might feel like you have no one and or are lonely, but think logically and positively about every notion and never the worstcase scenario,” he said.
Having a routine is crucial, he said.
“Depression or mental health issues can take away your structure from day to day, making a daily schedule or planner can help you get back on track,” Gear said.
He talks about establishing a routine and setting objectives for yourself. When you’re struggling with mental health concerns, you frequently feel as though you can’t accomplish anything. Gear advises starting out with small tasks, like doing the dishes or the laundry. As you start to feel better, you add more and you’ll have this sense of satisfaction once you finish them.
Every culture has its own way of making sense of the very subjective experience that is mental health knowledge. Each has an opinion on whether mental illness is real or perceived, whether it is a mental or physical illness, or both, who is at risk for it, what causes it, and, probably most crucially, the level of negative stigma associated with it. Mental illness may be more widespread in some communities and societies. Although, this is also influenced by whether the problem is caused by inherited or societal factors.
People decide how they will live
with mental illness and seek therapy based on these societal influences and standards. Cultural factors frequently influence how much help people receive from their families and communities. This is especially important because mental health issues cannot be simply neglected and ignored; doing so has a significant impact on a person’s quality of life, can result in major distress and has ramifications for their health.
People of color, in general, have been constantly trained to be strong and to have their guard up at all times. Thus, being strong takes away the ability to speak about mental illness and mental health.
Sanders said, “I have an Hispanic mother and a Black father; even from my dad he always made sure I was a strong women because guys can take advantage of it and not showing because we may look weak, and I think that is something that was implemented at very young age.”
According to the article, Mental Health Disparities Among College Students of Color, “Across race/ ethnicity, we find modest variation in symptom prevalence and larger variation in service utilization. Overall, treatment use is lower among students of color relative to white students, even when controlling for other variables in regression models. Asian/Asian American students have the lowest prevalence of treatment, at only 20% among those with apparent mental health conditions.“
In terms of mental health, college students of color continue to be understudied. Some studies have indicated that students of color
have a higher rate of depression and anxiety in addition to higher degrees of illness and disability than white students.
Now that we are aware of the issue, we may take steps to address mental health and its cultural roots, which range from unhealthy coping mechanisms to the belief that one must be tough or that mental health is irrelevant and won’t matter in a few years.
In order for persons dealing with mental health issues to receive care as soon as they notice their condition deteriorating and avoid reaching the point where they feel they are unable to cope with life, students and colleges must endeavor to reduce stigma and raise awareness.
SIU offers Wellness & Health Promotion Services instruction in health promotion and prevention to give students the knowledge they need to make wise decisions about their health and well-being.
Students who live in University Housing have access to counseling thanks to a collaboration between CAPS and the residence halls. For assistance with everything from crisis services, intakes and individual treatment, students can phone or visit the office. In addition, group therapy, workshops and seminars are offered. The $10.00 door fee per visit is charged to your bursar account. Students who are unable to pay the door fee can get financial assistance.
Staff reporter Sarah AlliBrown can be reached at sallen@ dailyegyptian.com. To stay up to date with all your Southern Illinois News follow the Daily Egyptian on Facebook and Twitter.
College campuses have always been known to be exceptionally stressful. Students are often adjusting to a new town, leaving family for the first time, struggling with the change between a high school class schedule and their new college class schedule. It can be a difficult transition, and the pandemic only made it more challenging.
Campus was empty, classes were online, and there were few ways to meet new friends. It became incredibly easy to spend all day alone in the dorms, eating microwavable macaroni and cheese and avoiding doing any homework by watching TV in bed all day.
It’s a hard cycle to get out of and it’s a lifestyle that can fuel depression and anxiety in those that struggle with mental health issues, which can make it even more difficult to create healthy habits.
Jaime Clark, the director of the Student Health Services at SIU, said the transition to remote learning created a problem of social disconnectedness that made it difficult for some students to succeed in school.
“I think it’s hard to transition to a college experience where, either your high school experience was anything but normal because of the pandemic and then transitioning to now, post
pandemic, or maybe it’s a great loss because you started off with kind of what you see as this traditional college experience, where you’ve lost some of that during the pandemic, and now we’re trying to rebound from that,” Clark said.
Because of the lack of connection, many students felt like they didn’t have a strong support system or resources to cope with the struggles they were dealing with. On top of that, many students weren’t aware of options they had to receive care, but there are options in place for students who are seeking mental health care.
One of the more well-known services SIU provides is counseling services through the SIU Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS).
According to the CAPS website, their list of services include individual counseling, group counseling, crisis services, gender-based violence services, alcohol and other drugs services, couples counseling, dialectical behavior therapy program, eating disorder outpatient program, and the SIU mandatory suicide assessment.
“One thing that I think is really important to note that not a lot of students know is that any student can be seen any day without an appointment,” Clark said. “So they can walk in and, if they’re struggling, they can be seen that day.”
CAPS services are also not limited to the Student Health Center at SIU. In fact there are four other locations students can go to seek mental health services.
“A lot of people think that you can just seek mental health services at the Student Health Center, but we also have satellite locations where we have clinicians in University Housing at both Baldwin and Grinnell Halls, and then we also have two clinicians now in the Multicultural Resource Centers, and a clinician in athletics,” Clark said.
These locations were put in place to help reach underserved students on campus and address issues they may be having with accessing care. Additionally, the locations allow for extended hours of service.
“You can be seen until 9 p.m., seven days a week and on the weekends, we have clinicians in housing,” Clark said. “So those are kind of walk-in services as well.”
There is also a system in place at CAPS to help victims of genderbased violence such as sexual assault, dating violence, domestic violence and stalking, which waives the fee for students who have experienced genderbased or sexual violence, said Dr. Abby Bilderback, the director of CAPS and associate director of Student Health Services.
“Our entire team is trained to be trauma informed, and we have some
specialized providers on a sexual assault treatment team to really make sure that students are receiving holistic care in response to the experience of of gender based violence that they’ve survived,” Bilderback said.
Because the recovery process is different for everyone, CAPS works with different systems such as providing medication to fully serve the students.
“It’s not just counseling, it’s working with our medical providers and Student Health Services working with our psychiatry department, our confidential adviser through wellness and health promotion services, and our prevention educators through wellness and health promotion services,” Bilderback said. “So I would say that it takes more of a holistic approach than just counseling.”
Part of this includes being present on campus during campus tragedies or events. In the 2021-2022 school year, there were five student deaths at SIU and many more acts of violence that affected the student body.
“When there is an incident that impacts a group of students, we try to reach out to the students that have been impacted to offer support to offer counseling services,” Bilderback said. “We often attend university events to make sure that we have a presence there and that if any student
needs to talk to us while we’re there, that can be helpful as well.”
There are numerous services that are currently available to SIU students who are seeking help with their mental health.
But these services need to be better promoted.
Many students go through the full college experience at SIU without having ever heard of a majority of the services available to them, but until students are made more aware of their options for mental health care, one of the most important things to remember is to look out for other students who seem like they may be struggling.
“Look out for the people that are around you,” Bilderback said. “If you notice that somebody’s struggling, to not be afraid to pick up the phone and call CAPS and let us know what you’re seeing or what your friend or or you know, classmate might be experiencing.”
(Editor’s Note: If you are an SIU student experiencing struggles with your mental health, contact the SIU Counseling and Psychological Services at 618-453-3311)
Editor-in-Cheif Sophie Whitten can be reached swhitten@dailyegyptian.com or @sophiewhitten_
The majority of students are aware of the middle of the semester mind-groggy, burned-out feeling. It’s that time of year when a lot of us question if missing classes is worth not getting out of bed for a morning or two just to allow the brain to reboot and have a short reprieve for a moment before trying to grind out more papers and prepping for more midterms to come.
The sentiment I hear most often at that time of year involves wishing for fall break to still be a thing we could partake in. Much of us work on class work and suffer from fatigue building up and by the time Thanksgiving comes we are spending most of that break working on and/or studying for finals and we don’t have much of that week to actually take a break.
Typically, fall break lasts one to two weeks in either September or October. The words “no longer available” are directly next to fall break, which is still included on SIU’s academic calendar as it has been for years.
The reason that we no longer have fall break at SIU is related to Carbondale’s almost unbelievable history of Halloween celebrations, the likes of which we don’t really see anymore.
I have heard from several SIU alumni I have casually run into about the car flipping and burnings that would happen in honor of the Halloween festivities.
According to a previous DE piece by Ryan Zurich titled “A Historical look at SIU: When Halloween was official,” one of the reasons we lost Halloween and were given fall break was in order to quell the insane celebrations that would sometimes shut down streets.
So students created unofficial. A celebration that is still observed to this day, even after SIU gave its student body Halloween back.
However, Halloween and unofficial are mainly party events that span a few days in October and continue while courses are still in session, hardly offering students a restful mental reprieve.
While fall break was made to try and cool down the crazy party antics of students back in day, I think that it could serve another purpose: a mental health break for students.
As mental health becomes a hot topic issue, we learn more and more of the struggles the common college student faces. Even our own school has acknowledged that students need a break given the promised mental health days
that rarely have come into fruition in the last year or two.
I propose reinstating fall break for this purpose. Most students don’t get to use their Thanksgiving break to unwind because of how cramped the second half of the fall semester tends to be.
My roommate this year had to spend everyday doing school work and came back to school after break just as stressed as she was when she left. I don’t believe this is an uncommon experience among the student body.
We had fall break before so it is plausible for it to happen again and work with the school schedule. It would give
a guaranteed mental health break rather than having the student body anxiously waiting for the school to announce a mental health day that never seems to come.
I can also imagine that bringing back the fall break would also aid in maintaining student attendance. I know for me I tend to take days for myself if I am not feeling well both physically and/ or mentally. I know I would feel more motivated if I knew there was a week that was coming up when I could take a break.
Some schools like Western Illinois University, University of Utah, and the University of Texas at Austin all have fall
break listed on their academic calendars. Despite the circumstances that SIU was granted fall break the practice is not uncommon at other universities.
While the students may talk among themselves about their wishes for fall break to be something that is brought back, I think it is something that should be strongly considered by school officials for the sake of the student body’s mental health, something that they say is very important to them.
many other schools.
The goal of the Green Bandana project is to take a broader approach to suicide prevention and mental health support. Students who wear a green bandana on their backpack are not only saying that they support those who are struggling, but also have campus and national resources to help those who may be having mental health struggles.
“We want to raise awareness to those who are struggling in silence, to let them know that there are people in their communities that care and want to help them,” said Trent Brown, a SAAC representative and senior on the SIU men’s basketball team.
Being a fairly new program at Southern Illinois University, the Green Bandana Project was started in the Fall of 2021 by the Student Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC). Members Cole Steward, former Saluki football player, and Bailey Neuberger, current volleyball redshirt junior, helped start the foundation for the program.
SAAC is a committee made up of student athletes who want to provide insight on their collegiate experience, so the Green Bandana Project fits in with their ideas perfectly.
Originally founded at the University of Wisconsin-madison in 2016, the Green Bandana Project has become a national program that is still growing and spreading its message of importance on mental health to
The mental health of student athletes is so often overlooked and much of the focus is put on their physical performance. Student athletes are asked to manage hours of their sport and school, and find time to maintain their social life outside of these things. This can weigh heavily on their mental health.
A study done by the NCAA stated that 30% of student athletes said that they were feeling extremely overwhelmed, 25% said that they were feeling mentally exhausted, and the study showed that the depression rates among college athletes were considerably higher than those of other students.
“The Green Bandana Project is a very subtle way of showing support for those struggling, but I think it’s a step in the right direction, especially with everything we have seen with student athletes and mental health awareness,” Neuberger said.
Not being in a good place mentally can affect the physical performance of an athlete. The Green Bandana Project has helped to break the stigma around the mental health of athletes and make it a priority and over the past few years mental health has been made a top priority among Saluki athletics.
“I hope that the education that this project brings to people will show them the pressure that we are put under, and while others have high expectations for us, we have higher expectations for ourselves and sometimes that
can be a lot,” Neuberger siad.
Recently hired Athletic Director Tim Leonard is very concerned about the mental health and well being of his athletes. He said he believes that athletes’ mental health is just as important as their physical health and that understanding the mental health of the athletes and what needs to be done to help them maintain it is at the top of his priorities.
“In terms of mental health, that is something we’re trying to work on with our sports performance the student athletes well being overall, we want to make sure our athletes are getting proper nutrition, good sleep schedules, the proper strength and conditioning, but we need to understand the mental health of our athletes,” Leonard said.
This year, the Dawg Pound has had three events sponsored by Southern Illinois Healthcare in relation to mental health and the Green Bandana Project. They have themed a men’s and women’s basketball game “green out” to show their support for the project and the athletes mental health, they also did a “rally around the pound” game for women’s volleyball. All of these games had booths set up where anyone in attendance could stop by and learn more about the project and grab a green bandana to show their support.
Having these games sponsored by Southern Illinois Healthcare shows that not only the campus but the community supports those
who are struggling with mental health issues.
“I think it’s a great thing the Dawg Pound and SIH have done in terms of creating those types of games and atmospheres. I believe highlighted events like these bring on the conversation of mental health and have the ability to reach those in our community that are in need of help and don’t know where to turn,” Brown said.
As the institution is taking mental health more seriously, the athletes are making sure to keep their mental health as their top priority.
Maintaining a life away from their sport is one way some athletes are doing this.
“I like to prioritize my life outside of volleyball, having different hobbies outside of my sport really helps. I like to go on walks, running, riding bikes and hanging out with my friends. Volleyball is only one part of my life but if I make it my whole life that’s when it feels like there is more pressure,” Neuberger said.
Brown agrees with putting his mental health first by finding things he enjoys outside of his sport.
“I believe in taking time for yourself even when your schedule seems too busy, talking to friends and family and getting a good amount of sleep every night helps a lot,” Brown said.
Staff reporter Joei Younker can be reached at jyounker@dailyegyptian.com
Let’s hear it for those
