How to Reach Out When You’re Struggling: A Q&A With Catherine Christian
As we approach the fall and winter months, students may begin to feel their stress amplify; homework piles seem to double in size, responsibilities and deadlines make themselves known more than ever, and mental health in general tends to decrease in quality. In these circumstances, I wanted to share some advice on how students can manage when they are struggling. To get some really good tips, I spoke with the lovely Catherine Christian, Arcadia’s manager of Wellness, Health Promotion, and Alcohol and Other Drug Education!
Q: What is your role on campus?
My office was formed because, as I like to think of it, if you think of Student Health Services as medical providers and then Counseling Services as mental health support, my office is like the child under those two parent offices. We follow a public health model, meaning that all of our work is like a broader, community-lens view of health promotion. We focus on all six dimensions of wellness, which are mental, physical, belonging, financial, intellectual, and spiritual. We do keep in mind that with our student population, we really focus on the big three: mental, physical, and belonging (or social).
Q: In your opinion, what are the biggest issues facing college students now?
Well, depression and anxiety have always been really big, specifically among college students; but before COVID, depression rates were a little bit higher, and now post-COVID, we’re seeing that anxiety is really high, in this student population, as well as all other ages. The feeling of belonging, the feeling of connectedness, I think they play into COVID too; some of the students coming into college now were in middle school only five years ago, which are prime years for forming social connections and learning how to interact with people your age, to take chances socially, and learn social cues. Now, folks who were taken out of that and had this weird experience, being out of school for a few years due to COVID, I think really struggle with knowing how important a sense of community and belonging is to your overall health and wellness.
Q: What are the different mental health issues college students face now compared to previous years?
So depression rates were a little bit higher, but anxiety is really something that has such a grip on college students nowadays. And further, this may be more true on a national level than at Arcadia specifically, but drinking rates are actually going down among college students. It’s noticeable even when I was in college ten years ago, though I went to a different school, that alcohol use rates are significantly going down now among 18-24 year olds. And we are seeing an emphasis in pop culture on physical health and wellness, so I do think people are a little bit more aware. The flip side of that, though, is that marijuana use is a little bit higher among the population now.
Q: Do mental health providers also experience mental health issues?
When I try to explain this kind of thing to folks, I like to use this analogy, keeping in mind that not every issue with mental health is a mental illness and that not every person in the world has a mental illness. In the same way that everyone at some point in their life has a cold, has the flu, has strep throat, or has a stomachache, everyone in their life at some point might struggle with a mental health issue. They might struggle with periods of depression, or anxiety, or even things that are more severe or more crippling, but if you look at it like how there can be something wrong with your physical body, something can also ‘go wrong’ with your mental health, and I think that’s a better way to think about it. There’s no group of people that are excluded from that, so like how even someone with high health literacy, like a doctor, can get sick, then even someone like a counselor or a therapist can struggle with aspects of their mental health.
Q: How do Arcadia’s resources differ from other schools? How do we support students specifically at Arcadia?
Well, I think that institutions of higher education are notorious for having very separate offices, meaning that certain organizations act like ‘This is my work and this is what I do,’ and the organization next to me does their work and that’s what they do; and sometimes they forget that the best work can be done together with collaboration. I think Arcadia, granted, we’re a small school, does a good job regarding the emphasis on collaboration, that we all can meet our goals and greater goals when we work together. I notice this specifically with athletes; at my last institution, where I worked in a similar position, in the health promotion office, it felt like we couldn’t touch athletes with a ten-foot pole. Like, they were doing their own thing, and we had little to no interaction with them. But when I started here at Arcadia this fall, I saw that the Counseling Center at the beginning of the school year does very thorough mental health screenings with every athlete on campus. They check in with them and build a really solid relationship between them and the athletic trainers, the Counseling Center, and Student Health Services. They really emphasize our holistic view, focusing on this population of students that might be more susceptible, for whatever reason, to mental and physical health issues. That’s just one example, but Arcadia does a good job of mitigating that divided effect common in higher education. I credit that interconnectedness to good leadership; like with the athletes, I think of Danielle Duffy, the athletic trainer. She is so invested in the mental health of her athletes that I think she naturally fosters that relationship. It really comes down to leadership, where you need that example set so that the rest of your staff can follow suit. That’s really the example we want to set for our students.
Q: How do you suggest students speak up when they are struggling?
Full disclosure, I’m not a counselor; I don’t have a degree in counseling. My degree is in public health, but what we try to teach students is to check in on their friends and to be a human being before anything else. Honestly, this is a conversation I have with faculty and staff too, that before you are a professor, or a counselor, or a friend, or an RA, you are a human being. And what greater way is there to be a human being and to express that humanity than by checking in on people? So I think that normalizing this culture of, ‘Hey, I noticed you missed a couple of classes,’ or ‘Hey, I noticed you seem kind of down, do you want to talk about it?’ And being someone who knows that you aren’t going to solve everyone’s problems – you probably won’t solve any of their problems, because if it was that simplistic, they could figure it out themselves, right? But just being somebody who you would want to talk to, that’s what I try to think about.
I try to create a space, at least for the students in my office, where they can talk to me about things that they’re struggling with, because, above wanting them to learn and do things about public health, I want them to be human beings who are successful in the world. I think for anyone who is struggling, it’s so important to know that there are people out there who want to talk to you, who want to hear you, and care about what you have to say, and that you’re worth listening to. But I think all of that comes from, like I said, fostering a community of, ‘These are our people and we have to look out for our people.’
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to share?
I would just say, to all college students: there are always more things happening on campus than you think, so take advantage of them while they’re here! Even if you’re someone who feels like you haven’t found your circle or your space yet, there are people there for you.
A special thank you to Catherine for helping me out with this interview, and thank you, dear reader, for taking the time to stop by!
