The recession has caused such stress among university students it could lead to mental health problems, says Ted Tierney, of Mental Health Ireland. COURTNEY BROOKSreports
UNIVERSITY students generally experience stress over grades and finances but are now contending with parents being laid off, breakdown in relationships with family, or significant others, and a job market where both students looking for part-time work and graduates trying to start their careers are struggling.
“From a clinical perspective... chronic stress can lead into clinical anxiety, panic disorder and even clinical depression,” says Ted Tierney, deputy chief executive of Mental Health Ireland (MHI).
Students have always been vulnerable to mental illness and may be made especially vulnerable by the recession, he says.
According to a 2007 report from the World Health Organization, one in four students will develop a mental health problem such as anxiety or depression.
Although it is too early to have data on how many more students have sought counselling this year than usual, health centres are seeing an influx of students with symptoms of sleep disorders, anxiety and depression brought on by stress related to the recession.
“While there is always stress and pressure for students, especially at exam time, here in LIT we have noted a marked increase in the numbers of students presenting to the counselling service with stress, anxiety and depression related to the economic downturn,” says Noreen Keane, head of counselling at Limerick Institute of Technology.
“Many students have lost their part-time employment, are unable to gain summer employment and many of their parents have also lost their jobs, this has lead to increased personal and financial pressure. Students who have just completed their final exams are also extremely worried about the uncertainty of their future career prospects.”
Paul Kelly, a clinical psychologist in student counselling at University College Dublin, says that its health centre has seen more students come in expressing anxiety over parents losing jobs, financial worries in general and, specifically, about how they are going to finance their studies in the future.
“This is only really beginning, and I think it will get worse,” he says. “Part of the job is to make them understand that their feelings are related to money problems rather than some sort of internal failure, which is an understandable reaction to what’s going on.”
Then there are students like Laura Wall, 21, who has experienced elevated stress this year but does not consider herself anxiety-ridden enough to seek counselling.
“With the money stresses at home my summer seemed pretty bleak when I thought I was going to stay here. Everything that’s been going on has been very depressing,” Ms Wall, who has graduated from Dublin City University this summer with a degree in communications, says.
A cutback on her father’s salary put her under pressure to make more money at her part-time job, but then she saw her hours reduced. She broke up with her boyfriend when lack of funds led to them staying in more and their relationship becoming “routine and boring”.
This summer she is going to Thailand for a month with friends, partly because the flights and cost of living are cheap. “I just need to get out of Ireland for a bit,” she says. She is currently working three jobs so she can afford it.
Ms Wall applied for the master’s programme in public relations at the Dublin Institute of Technology in hopes of waiting out the recession. “If I didn’t get that I would be really worried,” she says.
“I would feel like I was failing, if you go to all these people and you’re getting all these rejections, of course it’s going to affect you. That would make you feel really low.”
This feeling of failure can fuel depression in students who are used to succeeding and can’t find a job, Mr Tierney says.
DCU ran two and a half “mental health weeks” this year instead of one to educate students about the signs of anxiety, depression and eating disorders in themselves and their friends.
President of the student union Niall McClave, 25, says the decision was made by the student union and the counselling centre.
“We just noticed that there was this anxiety within students that we wouldn’t have seen other years; there is this atmosphere of doom and gloom.”
Mr McClave says that while they see many students who are stressed and anxious about their financial situation they only recommend the worst cases to seek counselling.
Although a recent survey conducted by MHI at the National College of Ireland showed that 90 per cent of students says their mental health was important to them many students don’t seek counselling because of the stigma around mental illness, Mr Tierney says.
“Every educational facility should have an interactive policy of positive mental health education and promotion for their student body.
“Counsellors should also be readily available to all students to provide early intervention and positive coping mechanisms for any identified mental health problem,” Mr Tierney says.
“I just hope we get out of this recession,” Ms Wall says.