Receiving student financial aid is an important solution to problems faced by prospective college or university students. Yet more often than not, student loans also pose as additional stressors once financially indebted students actually enter life on campus. While they go through feelings of desolation by being away from home and family, students are also faced with difficulties in coping with new situations and with different kinds of people, and most of all, with tougher academic requirements.
Dr. Victor Schwartz of The Jed Foundation, a non-profit organization formed to provide protection and emotional health support to adolescents and young adults, opines that financial struggles affect different aspects of a student’s life on campus. Simple things such as food availability and housing security may be provided with solutions by taking on multiple jobs. As they struggle to balance those with academics, they are not getting enough rest or sleep. All of which leads to physical stress and mental anxiety.
Currently, several Democratic presidential candidates are promising education reforms regarding free college tuition, and of eliminating student debts altogether. In the meantime, since they are still political promises that may or may not be fulfilled, university and college students have to face the reality that their struggles continue.
Students Likely to be Hit with Mental Health Problems
Apparently, students coming from low income families who view college education as a way of improving their status in life are the most affected. Although student financial loans give them a chance to fulfill their aspirations, visions about a better future becomes blurred once the toll of financial and academic struggles affect their mental well being. After all, how they fare with their higher learning will affect their chances of landing higher-paying jobs once they complete their college education.
Often times, students who rely on a combination of academic scholarships and student loans become vulnerable to feelings of anxiety and depression. Not a few are aware that they are already experiencing mental health problems that require professional counselling. As they try to cope with both academic and financial struggles on their own, their anxiety about the future worsens, making them doubt altogether whether or not the future will be worth all the trouble they are currently going through.
Choosing the Right Educational Institution by Looking Into Those that Provide Sufficient and Proper Student Support Services
The Jed Foundation recommends that one way of alleviating and avoiding anxiety over student financial aid loans, is to choose from educational institutions wisely. The foundation forewarns that for-profit colleges are likely to have fewer mental health services to offer as support, when compared to private schools or colleges that are part of a large system that receives funding support.
Still, such may not always be the case. University Primetime, a popular source of higher education news gathered statistical data in analyzing the rising rates of depression in campuses. Based on their statistical analysis and survey, college news website released a list of educational institutions in which cases of depression among students are high.
The published list named the University of California, Berkeley, New York University, Cornell University, Duke University and the Pennsylvania State University, as the top five higher education institutions in which mental health issues are becoming prevalent. A problem that most universities and colleges must address by improving the mental health services made available to students.