Anxiety at Schools

By John Hain [CC0 or CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

I don't know about you, but there have definitely been times where I have been too anxious to go to class, office hours, or even club meetings that I have had. One time, I was going to be 10 minutes late to a 200 person lecture, and I was still too scared to go in. I think that anxiety effects way more people than anyone thinks, since anxiety has surpassed depression as the leading diagnosis in college students. Not a lot of people talk about it, and I have noticed that mental health is very much romanticized on social media sites such as Twitter and Tumblr. There are countless accounts that glorify having anxiety, depression and other mental health disorders and it really bothers me because it's not really something that should be romanticized and glorified. I was looking through Tumblr and the amount of self deprecating jokes that I saw was ridiculous. People just make jokes about it and don't seek help, but I do think this is partly because a lot of students don't really know where to get help. On our campus there's obviously the CAPS center at campus health where you can go in and talk to someone, but I don't think it's that widely known. I think that if ways to get help were more widely advertised, a lot more people would go and get help. People have really unhealthy coping mechanisms, especially at UofA (which is known as a 'party school') and I really do think there's a lot of ways to live a healthier lifestyle.