Welcome to #GradMentalHealthWeek 2019

This week (April 15-19, 2019) GSA’s social media channels (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) will be taken over for #GradMentalHealthWeek.

Graduate student mental health is a silent crisis in higher education. Students who opt to attend graduate school are largely highly intelligent, self-motivated individuals who are then placed under high levels of stress due to high academic standards and pressure to complete research in a location that may not have the same level of local support from friends and family. Grad school at CMU also may represent the first time that some of our graduate students are in such a competitive academic environment. It can be a shock to suddenly feel in the middle of the curve rather than at the top. This also says nothing about the incidence of graduate students entering school with pre-existing mental health diagnoses which can then be exacerbated under the pressure of CMU.

Recent journal publications place the percent of graduate students who suffer from moderate to severe anxiety is 41% while 39% experience moderate to severe depression (Source). Especially because only 6% of the general population suffers from depression and anxiety, this signals a problem in graduate school. While we do not have data from a comparable study at CMU, we know from the 2016 HealthyU Study results that nearly 70% of graduate students at CMU report “moderate to high stress levels that they do not manage well”. Additionally, 14% of grad students report having used the Counseling and Psychological Services (CaPS) at least once and another 14% report that they thought about using it, but ultimately did not.

These are significant numbers of graduate students at CMU who may be facing high levels of mental distress potentially for the first time in their lives. Regardless if it is the first time or not, GSA actively advocates for projects on campus that affect student mental health. You can see all of the major advocacy points laid out in our Strategic Plan Tracker along with how much progress we have made.

In addition to GSA’s advocacy, we also hope to directly be of benefit to our constituents. This week, we are using #GradMentalHealthWeek to post information to support our students, whether they need a reminder to be mindful or an introduction to the support resources available to them at CMU. There are four types of posts you will see:

1. Mindfulness Moments: These are short reflection prompts or small activities that you can do on your own at any point during the day to remind you to be mindful.
2. Read and Learn: These are links to longer content, articles or books, which provide additional context to mental health issues graduate students face or general information about various mental health conditions.
3. Find Support: Information about products and services (both in person at CMU and online) that can help you on a regular basis or in times of crisis.
4. Act It Out: This is the “challenge problem” section. While the other types of posts are things you can do/read on your own without anyone else knowing, these are activities and prompts that require you to interact with others in a way sensitive to mental health.

While a major issue facing graduate student mental health at CMU is the knowledge and ability to utilize mental health support services due to financial and temporal constraints, a potentially even larger one is the lack of a campus culture that acknowledges mental health struggles as a basic part of life and prioritizes support through such times. This week, we hope to motivate you to change your own internal mindset to mental health as well as motivate you to be an active part of shifting the CMU culture. Since so many people struggle with stress, why do we continue to downplay its effects and almost idealize an unhealthy level of struggle. Instead, let's commit to a campus culture where students, staff, and faculty can come together and be honest about struggles and instead of fearing stigma, find acceptance and support.