Demetre Vasilounis
Contributor
Stress, students, and the school year have formed a seemingly unbreakable bond amongst themselves, like a tight-knit clique of buddies that you’ll never see apart. With the beginning of the new school year upon us, a wave of anxiety has washed over the collective student body, and this is particularly applicable to many first-year students who might not know what to expect from the coming year in terms of work.
Lindsay Rubinfeld and Aranda Wingsiongi are here to help. They are the co-founders of the York chapter of the student mental help group Active Minds. Active Minds is a non-profit organization founded in 2001. With 351 chapters across the US and Canada, Active Minds’ goal is to make both knowledge and the social events available to any students suffering from mental health issues.
“Getting involved with Active Minds is simple,” says Rubinfeld. “I came across a video [that] described Active Minds and the different programs they run every year. Being a psychology student, I have always been interested in mental health and spending most of my academic time learning about it. I sent the link to a fellow psychology student, Aranda Wingsiong. We decided that we should start a chapter at York.”
Rubinfeld is quick to emphasize the importance of students taking the initiative to seek help. While there are services on campus to help students dealing with anxiety, they are often underused due to the stigma associated with declining mental health.
When it comes to physical health, many students would not hesitate to go to the hospital in the case of an injury or sickness. It seems that there is a discrepancy when it comes to mental health, however, and students may find themselves deciding against seeking help as they may feel uncomfortable accepting that they may have a mental disorder.
University can be an unforgiving environment, and many students drop out in their first year due to an inability to cope with the pressure of an unending workload. Combine this with a slew of other problems, personal or otherwise, and some students could find themselves in for a tumultuous first year.
According to an American study, young adults aged 18-24 have the highest prevalence (at 27 per cent) of diagnosable forms of mental illness among the entire population. Common disorders for college students include anxiety disorders, bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, and anorexia nervosa.
The study also found that nearly half of all college students feel so depressed at some point that they have trouble functioning. It goes on to state that suicide is the leading cause of death among college students, claiming the lives of 1,100 each year. Even more troubling, half of all college students have had suicidal thoughts and 1 in 10 students seriously consider attempting suicide.
Rubinfeld and company want the York student body to realize that Active Minds is for everyone.
“Even if you are interested in simply learning about mental health, the chapter provides many resources,” Rubinfeld says. “At this point in time, our chapter’s accomplishments are limited as we are only starting our first year at York. We want to run multiple programs this year including movie screenings, panel discussions, and mental health awareness weeks, and build a large united chapter on our campus. Most importantly, we want to get the word out.”
