Podcast

This podcast discusses the impact of mental health on college students' educational experiences. It focuses on three groups: regular college students, male college students, and LGBTQ+ college students. Mental health issues such as anxiety and depression are prevalent among college students. The podcast emphasizes the importance of managing stress, getting enough sleep, and practicing self-care. It also highlights the stigma surrounding men seeking professional help for mental health. While college can be a safe haven for LGBTQ+ students, they still face stress and depression. The overall educational experience can set students up for success if they learn from their experiences and make adjustments. The podcast encourages listeners to take care of their mental health and offers resources for further support. Hello, everyone. My name is Thomas Galusha, and welcome to the Psychological Struggles Within Education. This is the podcast that dives into the effects of mental health and the overall educational experiences for college students. In today's episode, we'll be exploring a fascinating world of the effects of mental health and overall educational experiences for college students. Whether you're currently a college student, a parent of a college student, a friend of a college student, or you work for a university, or you're simply curious about the subject, there will be something for everyone. So let's get started. Mental health is something that affects everyone at every age. Unfortunately, that's not how people generally think of mental health. The words themselves create a negative connotation that causes people to immediately think of something being inherently wrong. This is not always the case. Mental health is something that can be trained and developed in a way that benefits different people in their own unique ways. That being said, there are certain aspects of life that affect people's mental health in two different extremes. The college experience and the educational experience is definitely one of those things. Today we'll be looking at how the said educational experiences, especially in college, affects different kinds of people. We will be looking at three different groups of people, starting with just a regular college student woman, a college student man, and the last group will be a college student who is a member of the LGBTQ plus community. I think it will result in a lot of very interesting information to be found. I think that there will also be a lot of ideologies that many people expected, but they are unaware of the extreme to which that may occur, especially in today's world due to the massive amounts of stress and other mental health issues that are currently running through college campuses. Starting the main point of our podcast, we will be looking at whether or not college is taking too much of a toll on the mental health of the young woman. To begin to dive into this conversation, it is important to understand that the educational experience also includes all aspects of college outside of the academics. To go along with stress behind academics, colleges also experience countless social scenarios that can be fun but can also cause stress. As a result, a recent study found that female college students are more likely to struggle with anxiety than any other student, and in total, over 60% of college students struggle with anxiety and 40% feel depressed. There are plenty of examples to look at, social events that can cause stress for college students, especially here at the UConn campus. While some people would believe that like all the sporting events, for example, are extremely fun to go to, which they can be, and they definitely are for a lot of individuals, those kinds of events can also cause stress for a lot of different people in a lot of scenarios. For example, somebody could really question what they're going to wear to the event in order to impress a certain person, or some people will be exposed to the use of like drugs or alcohol as far as like tailgating for like a football game or something like that that they may not want to get involved with. So there's countless examples that can cause stress in those scenarios for individuals. So something that's really important to consider is how people can make bettering their mental health a practice. So one way to do that is managing stress and getting enough sleep. Those are two of the most important aspects of building a strong mental mindset. Two other aspects that are important for mental health are taking time for relaxation and for self-care. While it can be difficult to find balance, making adjustments from week to week is something that can be done until you find the right routine for you. That's another thing that's important to understand is that the fight against mental health will vary from person to person. There are certain things that will make their mental health stronger that can make it weaker for somebody else. It's all personal, which is why making adjustments and changing things around and trying new things is important. So the next question we'll be getting into is to what extreme is the college educational experience affecting young men attending these institutions? So some of the women, men also have major struggles recently and currently with mental health as a result of the college experience. However, academics are the leading factor in causing different aspects of mental health issues for men specifically. In the last year, almost 50% of men were feeling overwhelming levels of anxiety and plenty else were having a lot of trouble in the social scenarios too. So while many men are going through mental battles, they also tend to seek professional help and advice a lot less than others do. Men reaching out for mental help is definitely stigmatized in a poor way there. It is believed that if you do so that some men will consider reaching out to professionals as a sign of weakness and they'll believe it'll make them less of a man, which couldn't be further from the truth. Moving on, the next question we'll be looking into is, is the current college lifestyle helpful or harmful to the mental health for those students that identify as LGBTQ plus? So this is something that many people will put in the back of their mind and they can think about at one point and then they won't think about it again for a long time. When discussing mental health and its relationships for college students, many people forget to include those who identify as a man or woman in the conversation, as well as those who may be homosexual or any of the other options on the LGBTQ plus agenda itself. All these individuals all have a very unique experience based off of their backgrounds and where they feel like they are supported and where they feel like they are unsupported. However, it is an interesting comparison to males and females, as many people in the LGBTQ plus community have found that college to be almost a safe haven. Across college campuses are countless centers, clubs, and organizations that support and give space for LGBTQ plus members to get involved. Despite this, stress levels and depression still affect a high percentage of members, but it is more interesting to look at how certain groups will feel better in certain scenarios. With all this being said, I think it would be very important to further discuss the education experience itself. So, does the overall educational experience and its effect on people's mental health set them up for success or failure in the future? In my personal opinion, going through something difficult allows people to become more successful in their futures. However, there are always extreme situations like this, and absolutely no one should have a difficult time, have such a difficult educational experience where their mental health is incapable of recovery. However, finding through hard times is a great way for a person to mature and develop. In the college experience and educational experiences as a whole, it is all about making adjustments. It is about learning from things that you do where you feel successful and where you think, or times where you feel like you have failed, and learning from those experiences and changing how you go about them going forward. It can be compared to, like legitimately to a, like taking a test in a class. If you study one way for the exam and you get a C in it, and you're not very happy with the C on it, then the next time you study for the exam, you might study a little bit differently, and the next time you'll ace it. So, it's really important for people to treat the college experience and educational experience similar to that. As far from a mental health standpoint, if you have a certain week where you get more sleep than you did the last week, and all of a sudden you feel much better, that is something to consider going forward to do more often. If you decide to go out with your friends a couple times a week, and that made you feel more miserable, or that made you have a lot more stress because you didn't get all your work done, that's something to remember how you felt at that moment in time, and make an adjustment the next time your friends ask you to hang out. So, in conclusion, that's a wrap for today's episode. I hope you found our exploration of the effects of mental health and the overall educational experiences for college students, both engaging and informative. If you have any thoughts, questions, or topics you'd like to hear on future episodes, please reach out to us. You can find us, you can find me on my email at thomas.kalusha.edu, and don't forget to subscribe to the Psychological Studies Psychological Struggles Within Education to stay updated on our upcoming podcasts. Until next time, this is Thomas Kalusha signing off.