Why Depression Hits Different in College
Share this Article
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255), available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. All calls are confidential, and anyone can use this service.
- College students experiencing depression are not alone.
- Personal and life circumstances can contribute to depression.
- There are ways to cope, like facing your feelings and seeking help from professionals.
Depression is a mood disorder. It can impact your feelings, thoughts, and daily functioning, leaving you sad, irritable, or just plain uninterested in anything.
It's one of the more common mental health conditions among college students. More than 40% of college students surveyed in the 2021 Healthy Minds Study screened for depression.
Why is depression so common among students? And what can anyone do about it? Here's what students and counselors have to say about the causes of depression in college and how to deal with it.
What Causes Depression in College Students?
"No single cause for depression has been identified," said Missouri State University's Counseling Center director Rhonda Lesley. "However, some of the contributing factors include situations college students may face, such as increased stress and anxiety, alcohol and drug use, sleep deprivation, and social difficulties like isolation or challenges with roommates or peers."
Factors that contribute to depression are personal, including your family history, drug and alcohol use, and changes in your brain chemistry. Other factors are circumstantial, involving events that happen to you.
Here are a few factors that commonly crop up for college students:
First-year student Kelly Wallace said she faced anxiety in high school, but her mental health got worse once she got to college.
"I even got to the point where I was considering dropping out because of how lonely and depressed I was at school," she said. "I felt like I had to decide between my mental health and education."
When you go to college, you suddenly face a slew of decisions. From finding new friends to declaring a major, you're essentially redesigning your life, which comes with new feelings.
And according to licensed psychotherapist Barry Granek, you should let those feelings in. Granek, who specializes in life transitions in early adulthood, says to expect feeling:
"Allowing for emotions creates resolution," Granek said. "Avoiding emotions generates stress and eventually depression."
Wallace transferred from a super small high school to a university of thousands. But a bigger student body didn't help her feel less alone.
"I knew very few people at my university, and my closest friends were hours away," Wallace said. "And that's something I really struggled with, especially in the beginning. Even if you have friends on campus or the support of your family back home, you still feel alone."
But Wallace wasn't alone in feeling lonely. About two-thirds of college students surveyed in the aforementioned Healthy Minds Study said they felt left out, felt isolated from others, or lacked companionship at least some of the time.
It's no secret that college students experience academic and social pressure. Sometimes pressure can push us to perform our best. Other times, it leaves us feeling empty.
Brandon Bond, a public health and social work master's student, works as a wellness coach for his university's health services center.
Bond described his peers' mindset: "I'm trying to take all these classes, so I seem impressive for grad school. I'm trying to get all these internships, so I seem impressive to employers … but it was never centered around what they wanted necessarily, or what they needed as an individual."
On top of the factors above, college students face stressors related to the world we live in, including the following:
- Climate Crisis: More than half of 16-to-25-year-olds in an international climate anxiety survey reported feeling sad, anxious, angry, and helpless over climate change.
- Police Vi