“Dr. Kadison’s book is a good start for bringing these issues out into the open,” she says. While students may be prepared to handle the academic rigors of college, many of them are ill equipped to handle the mental challenges of college life.
“Students are much more active and busy than they used to be,” Schubert says. “They don’t have a lot of time for reflection, to ask the question ‘What’s important to me?’”
Today’s students lack resilience because of increased parental involvement at a later age, she says. As an example, Schubert says universities are seeing more parents calling the director of resident life to work out roommate issues on behalf of their child rather than pushing them to learn to deal with the problem on their own. “With cell phones and instant messaging, the things that students would have had to deal with on their own in the past, they can now instantly access other people to help them cope,” she says.
Gladding and Schubert say they hope to have a spirited discussion about mental health issues affecting today’s college students as well as increase awareness and find solutions to these issues. “This is a task for all of us,” Schubert says.
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