Recently I heard some students in one of my classes discussing why they had missed class last Friday. One of them said they missed because they went to the football game, one of them said that they went home for the weekend and the third one mentioned that she took a mental health day. I thought it was very interesting to hear one say they took a mental health day since not many people admit to needing a mental break.
Mental health is a topic that many see as taboo. Many people definitely don’t feel like talking about mental health or mentioning anything remotely related to it. Especially between college students, it has become a thing that many joke about but once given a serious situation prefer to evade the topic.
This got me thinking about how seriously many college students are taking mental health. I don’t think many see the reality. I have heard many people around me casually joke saying Kill me or I want to die or Can I just drop out and many more along the line. Of course they don’t seriously mean it and are just simply saying it as a joke. However there are those who mean it, those students that need time to take a breather.
Students like these get overwhelmed with the many assignments, surroundings and piled up emotions. They need time to take a breather and clear their minds. Unfortunately, the case for many is that they can’t take a mental health day. A scenario to illustrate this, we’ll name our person Julie.
Julie here is overwhelmed with the many assignments she has been getting. She recently got a grade on a test that she wasn’t very happy about. Julie is also dealing with homesickness since she is far from home. She feels the need to just relax, clear her mind, do nothing and worry about nothing for at least a day. Reality is she can’t, If she misses class she will lose participation, attendance and assignments, she would just fall behind.
This all causes the student to just get much more upset and stressed which deteriorates their mental health more. Mental health is something that affects everyone, in some cases it affects them more than others. None the less it is a topic that should be talked about more, especially among college students.
There may not be an easy solution, but a way we can all start helping students like Julie would be by creating Mental Health Days. Providing support to those students, especially if it comes from a professor or faculty. It’s a topic that shouldn’t be left as a thought inside one’s mind but instead voiced out, it’s a sigh of relief waiting to happen.