Analytical Summary: “What’s Happening to College Students Today?”
In Tim Elmore’s Psychology Today article, “What’s happening to College Students Today” posted on November 30, 2015, he informs us on the problems that students are having nationwide. The problem is students are committing suicide and its happening more frequently throughout the nation.
Elmore tells us on one occasion about a student who took her life away. However, no one would have thought she would have committed suicide due to be so prestigious in the school. This was not the first suicide that occurred that year, it was the third one to happen on that campus. Elmore states that, “The suicide rate among 15 to 24-year-olds in the U.S. has increased moderately but steadily since 2007.” (Elmore par 4) So what seems to be the major problem in college students today. Elmore points out that, “anxiety and depression,” (Elmore par 4) are one of the most common mental health diagnoses among students. Students are posting pictures of their lives that are unrealistic to their actually lives. But they want other students to believe them. The students are touching up, editing, and are exaggerating their life. They want to make the viewers feel that they are the only ones suffering while everyone else is doing
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“awesome.” (Qtd. In par 5) What is more disappointing is kids are trying to live their lives like the ones they post on social media. This is only one of the causes of the anxiety and depression. The second problem is that students are not used to failing and making mistakes.
Meeta Kumar a counselor at Penn has seen students that do not get the grades they want take it very hard on themselves. Kumar said,” What you and I would call disappointments in life, to them feel like big failures.” (Qtd. In par 6) Students aren’t exposed to failing which turns out terrible. Parents need to be able to let their kids grow themselves because it will later help them be more mature. With them learning at an early age to fail it would not be as bad. If kids learned that failure is not the end of it and take it as a learning experience, then they will learn to overcome problems that the world throws at
them. Lastly todays kids have grown up in homes that the expectations are held to a higher level than previous generations. Students grandparents lived during the Great Depression. The common goal of their grandparents were to have a steady job and to pay the bills. Then came their children which are now parents to today’s kids. Their goal was to a stable job and pay the bills. Elmore refers that, “post-World War II days were much more prosperous than Great Depression days.” (Elmore par 7) The baby boomer generation expectation were passed and now the kids of today have even bigger shoes to fill. The kids today have a lot on there hands because they are thought to feel special. When they are held to these higher expectations, they have a harder time to confront harsh realities, and their emotions suffer. Elmore states three things that adults forgot to tell you, “Life can be hard and disappointing. Life does not revolve around you. Life must not be lived in comparison to others.” (Elmore par 7) What Elmore says is very important because kids today are to soft and aren’t used to criticism. They feel like they are the center of attention and that nobody else matters. But in fact nobody cares about them but themselves and their families. Somethings that can help kids is one help them understand how to use social media. If kids could use it to show how they actually live their lives out nobody would be ashamed because they are telling the truth, and no ones lives are perfect. Also let them know that failure is something that happens to everyone including yourself, because this will let them know that they aren’t alone. They will also learn that they will become a better person. Lastly let them know that they have a place in this world and that they will have to endure tough times and they can over come any obstacles that life throws at them. In conclusion, Tim Elmore makes a great argument with facts to back his statements up. The article itself is very emotional because of the story Elmore begins the article with. He states the problems that students are having today and has great solutions to deal with them. The purpose of this article was an evaluation but leads to a proposal because of the statistics it shows. Elmore puts in great advice and informs us on what the problems are for kids today and lets the parents get valuable information.
Stress Induced Suicide Julie Scelfo’s “Suicide on Campus and the Pressure of Perfection” first appeared in The New York Times magazine on July 27, 2015. Scelfo discusses the pressure that family, society, and the individual places on themselves to be perfect. This stress ultimately results in college- age students taking their own lives. “Nationally, the suicide rate among 15- to 24-year-olds has increased modestly but steadily since 2007: from 9.6 deaths per 100,000 to 11.1 in 2013.” Scelfo uses an anecdote, statistics, and expert’s observations to successfully portray her stance on this issue.
In the past decade, suicide rates have been on the incline; especially among men. According to the New York Times (2013), “From 1999 to 2010, the suicide rate among Americans ages 35 to 64 rose by nearly 30 percent… The suicid...
According to an article by Josephine Marcotty in Minneapolis’ Star Tribune from April 10, college students lead “hyper-enriched lives,” said Greg Kneser, dean of students at St. Olaf College. That’s what makes this generation of students distinct from its predecessors, he said. That is why more students who cannot cope with these feelings end up at college counseling centers with “increasingly serious mental-health problems.” 15 to 20 percent of college students nationally were diagnosed with depression. The second most common diagnosis was severe anxiety. According to the article, it is not unusual for mental-health issues to become apparent during a student’s college years.
The survey found gender and parents' education level did not seem to provoke suicidal tendencies, but other demographic factors. These other such factors included age, class standing, race/ethnicity, living arrangement, and fraternity/sorority membership. The questionnaire indicated that freshmen and sophomores were more likely to consider suicide than upper-classmen; students of ethnic/racial backgrounds other than White, Black or Hispanic were more likely to have considered suicide; students who lived alone, with friends/roommates, or parents/guardians were more likely than those who lived with a partner or spouse; students who were members of a fraternity/sorority were less likely to have considered suicide. The components of tobacco, alcohol, and illegal substance use were then configured into the results.
Societal pressures are one of the major contributors which cause students to mainly focus on future rewards instead of appreciating the present. Alfie Kohn describes parents as someone “who seems to care less about their children’s well-being than their SAT scores and the thickness
In the past 35 years the suicide rate for college campuses has tripled (Oswalt 1995). This shows that there is a clear need for something to be addressed within the college community. The recent surveys show that about 10-15% of college students are depressed (Lindsey 2009). Depression can be a debilitating illness especially when many students attend college away from their close friends and family. This could result in students with more suicidal thoughts and attempts at suicide. In fact, the number of students with suicidal thoughts has tripled over the past 13 years as the number of students seeking help for depression doubled in the same span (Lindsey 2009). Depression can effect these teens in other areas of their life as well. The students who reported that they were depressed also reported that they considered their health fair or poor (Lindsey 2009). In their cases, depression not only effects them psychologically but also physically. Depression is also known to impair psychosocial development and academic success (Lindsey 2009). With all of these factors put togethe...
In the year 2016, a federal data analysis uncovered the tragic truth. Suicide rates had been in an all time high. Depression, had hit hard that year, resulting in an high increase (to 63%) in middle aged [women] suicide and three times as many teen [girl] suicides as there had been in 2014. With this information, one can see that there has been many tragic deaths in the past years. These deaths have left families torn and many dreams left behind.
Of the 4,600 youth who committed suicide, “7.8% self-reported having attempted suicide one or more times in the previous 12 months, 2.4% reported having made a suicide attempt in previous 12 months, 12.8% reported having made a plan for a suicide attempt in the previous 12 months, and 15.8% reported having seriously considered attempting suicide in previous 12 months” (American Association, 2010).
A young anonymous college freshman tells a story of the depression she faced throughout her first semester of college, through the transition and her roommate issues. Not only did it occur during her first semester, but through her second as well. Unfortunately, the depression overtook her life to the point of her desire to commit suicide. Luckily, she changed her mind in the last second and saved herself (Reachout.com). This young student is not just one of few depressed college students, but she is one of many. Colleges must take more responsibility of mental health issues, like depression, by researching the causes and effects while discovering beneficial treatments that promote the students’ overall well being.
Dokoupil, Tony. A. The "Suicide Epidemic" Newsweek Global 161.19 (2013): 1 Business Source Premier. EBSCO. Web.
Suicide has become a critical, national problem and the extent of this is mind-boggling. Suicides have been proven to be one of the leading causes of death among college students. According to Webters dictionary “suicide is the act killing oneself on purpose”. It derived from the Latin sui, meaning “self”, and caedere, which means “to kill”. But this is just a definition, because an actual suicide holds different meanings to people such as tragic, shocking, a relief, a cry for help, a shame, heroic, the right choice, punishment, revenge, protest, anger, a mistake, desperate, hurtful and many more. But why do people, like college students who have their entire future ahead of them, simply give up hope and turn their heads away from life and commit suicide. There are several causes of suicide, recent incidents of suicide on college campuses, warning signs from a suicidal. I blame the Constitution and the United States law for not taking any hard initiative on the subject of suicide. I also impose the choice of the media, which is reflecting and portraying suicide towards a wrong direction. However most important questions remain: can the growing epidemic of suicide be solved, what are communities doing about it and what can they do to help?
Suicide is the second leading cause of death for college-age youth and ages 12-18. More
The article I chose to evaluate involved college students and some of the abnormal behaviors that have been observed. Currently, suicide among college students is continuing to rise. Without completing the study, the motives behind their behavior would go unknown. Having an understanding on what is causing so many students to turn to suicide will help other be aware of the signs so that other alternatives can be utilized such as counseling.
The majority of schools address issues such as violence, teen pregnancy, and drug abuse; however, suicide is not discussed until it is too late. Students face a multitude of difficult challenges as they leave school, and most teachers have no idea about their life at home. Schools need to provide certain guidelines for teachers to follow to alleviate this problem. A teacher’s role is not to just teach. It is to treat their students like they were their own children. Teachers can’t always prevent their students from self-destruction, although they can take steps to help the issue, such as creating a positive learning environment for their students, truly knowing their students, and providing exciting activities for the students to do.
given to adolescent suicides in recent years, especially among college students, has tended to strengthen the belief