the briefing room

Lately, we’ve been hearing a lot about efforts to improve the services available to students related to their psychological well-being on campuses. University presidents met for a workshop recently, and Queen’s University welcomed a new $1-million chair to study stigma.

Now, I am no mental health professional but I do know a few things about universities and have some experience with anxiety and depression.

If it were up to me, those trying to improve things on Canadian campuses would keep one crucial principle in mind: be careful how you talk about it.

First, let’s call depression and anxiety something other than “mental illness.”

I know that might sound strange and many experts may cringe, but the range of psychological burdens and hurdles is vast, and placing what can be eminently manageable problems in such a huge box with so many other conditions can have unintended negative consequences.

Case in point: the term mental illness puts students overwhelmed by workload or having trouble being away from home for the first time in the same category as deranged killers.

You’re feeling sad and tired? Well, you must be mentally ill, you know, like Jared Loughner, that college kid who shot all those people in Arizona. It’s no surprise some students don’t seek help if to seek help is to be necessarily labelled as sick.

“Mood disorder” is a little better, but even “disorder” sounds overly clinical. We don’t say a person with the flu has “a lung disorder.” Read More