Rain dampened the plans for the National Depression Screening Day (NDSD) event in the Julian A. McPhee University Union (UU) Plaza today. However, the event carried on and the booth moved inside the UU.
Students who work for Peers Understanding, Listening, Speaking, Educating (PULSE) — a part of Health and Counseling Services — gave out surveys to students which assessed mental health.
Director of Health and Counseling Services Martin Bragg said this was the first on-campus event for NDSD that has happened in quite a few years.
“The point of this day is to help students who are struggling academically or personally,” Bragg said. “They can take a short screening to see if they could benefit from counseling services.”
The survey has broadened during the past 10 years to focus on anxiety disorders as well, Bragg said.
Students can also go online and choose between surveys about depression, anxiety, alcohol, bipolar disorder, eating disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Once the students filled out the survey in the UU, they could meet privately with a counselor to discuss the results. The online survey also gave students information on how to contact a counselor at the Health Center.
According to the American College Health Association – National College Health Assessment (ACHA-NCHA), 30 percent of college students reported they have “felt so depressed that it was difficult to function.”
The ACHA-NCHA survey also revealed 6 percent of college students reported they have seriously considered suicide.
Nutrition senior Erin Orme, a peer educator with PULSE who helped give surveys to students, said PULSE wants to create awareness of the resources available to students so they know of an outlet when they’re struggling with depression. Though the peer educators can’t diagnose students, Orme said they hope to make students feel more comfortable broaching the topic of depression.
“We’re here to be a bridge between students and the counseling center,” Orme said.
Psychology senior Katy Lackey, another peer educator, said the group was hoping that by making depression a topic of discussion, students would realize depression isn’t something to be embarrassed about.
Did You Know…
“Mental disorders are NOT medical/physical conditions like cancer or diabetes? Every mental disorder is merely a list of observable behaviors given a label and voted into existence by the APA Board.
No one can objectively prove you have a mental disorder? Even the APA President admits that no lab test exists to prove the existence of depression, ADHD, bipolar, and every other mental disorder–no brain scan, no blood test, nothing.
There is no reason to take a pill for a mental disorder, like you would for true medical/physical conditions? The chemical-imbalance-in-the-brain theory has never been proven to cause mental disorders, despite popular belief and drug company marketing.
Psychiatric drugs CAUSE chemical imbalances in the brain by disrupting normal brain chemicals? Long-term use can cause permanent brain and organ damage.
The FDA now admits antidepressants and ADHD drugs can CAUSE violent and suicidal behavior in children and adults? It is well-documented that most school shooters and baby killers over the last two decades were on psychiatric drugs.
Mental health screening, labeling and drugging of children is in almost every state in America? School screening programs like TeenScreen label normal children with mental disorders, leading to dangerous psychiatric drugging.
Over time, more people improve without psychotherapy than with it?”
Did you know that your claims do more harm than good? Sure, the meds aren’t a cure all for everyone, and should be used hand in hand with coping mechanisms and counseling. But to say that the meds are a complete lie is harmful, and totally false.
It’s easy to make those ridiculous statements, but try talking to people who actually have mental illnesses. Unless you are a doctor, you are not qualified to comment on their care, end of subject.
You are not a doctor, so stop acting like you’re an authority on a subject, because clearly you are not at all.
It’s great that the school is reaching out to students like this and trying to get them the help they need. I still remember Charles Tamae, and the heartbreak of realizing that a fellow student had gone that route, and felt so hopeless. I hope that this event helps students realize that there is help available, and that there is no shame in depression or mental illness.
it IS like having heart disease, or some other ailment, you can’t help it, you didn’t choose it.
I know you know nothing, my sister a former licensed Psychotherapist in California does and stated such in the aforementioned post. She quit because of all the “professional” psycho-drivil and patients were not being helped.
Psychiatry is to medicine as Astrology is to Astronomy
That’s all well and good, but that doesn’t mean I know nothing.
I have family on the treatment end of things. If she wasn’t able to help patients, that’s her own fault, not the fault of the system.
Yes, drugs are over used, but to blanket statement say that they are not useful at all is completely false and harmful to those who need them.
How does your sister being a former licensed Psychotherapist make yourself a credible source to critique the honest attempts of others to help out incoming student from going insane during their first year at college. I can say as a second year had i known about this screening i might have gone this instead and sought out help for my adjustment to my first year in college rather then go through what i had to my first year. By the way just because your sister might have considered some of this programs parts as “psycho-drivil” doesn’t mean that the whole program was completely worthless in in doing, cause that my friend is a hasty generalization which as a student here i would have hoped you’e learned by now is considered a “logical fallacy”. Thus making a large part of your argument invalid, and not even worth commenting on. In short 4LB your arguments against this program just got owned!
Sincerely laying down the law
your friendly neighborhood cal poly student
I’m not changing any of my positions.
Psychiatry is to medicine as Astrology is to Astronomy.
Psych drugs kill, e.g. Newton, Conn shooter
Better to talk to a caring friend.