The Campus Left vs. the Mentally Ill Berkeley offers counseling to those upset by a guest speaker. Other students have genuine problems. By Clay Routledge
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-campus-left-vs-the-mentally-ill-1505343051
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro is scheduled to speak Thursday at the University of California, Berkeley, and school officials are prepared. A campuswide announcement promised “support and counseling services for students, staff and faculty” who feel Mr. Shapiro’s presence threatens their “sense of safety and belonging.”
You don’t have to be a psychologist to see the absurdity of an elite American university offering mental-health services in response to a talk no one is required to attend. But such political theatrics aren’t objectionable only for free-speech reasons. A minority of students on college campuses legitimately struggle with mental illness, and they deserve support. They are collateral damage of psychology’s abuse for ideological purposes.
For one, the misappropriation of psychology contributes to the snowflake narrative. It is hard for people to appreciate that there are students who genuinely suffer from mental illness when they see so many academics, administrators and student activists making a pretense of psychological trauma in their quest to purge the campus of any ideas or experiences that do not conform to leftist orthodoxy.
The students we need to worry about usually aren’t the ones demanding safe spaces, obsessing over so-called microaggressions, or claiming words are violence. Many of those grappling with real mental illness do not seek or receive any mental-health services. That includes those at risk of suicide, the second leading cause of death among Americans between 15 and 34. One large national survey found that less than 20% of suicidal students were receiving treatment.
Mental-health professionals working on college campuses have noted an increased demand for services from students. There are reasons to debate the extent to which we are experiencing an increase in the prevalence of mental illness, as opposed to a decrease in college students’ preparedness for normal life stressors. Do young adults need mental-health services or more experience independently navigating the world? This issue is complex, and experts have diverse opinions.
Researchers have, however, identified reasons to be concerned about the psychological health of teenagers and young adults. In her new book, “iGen,” social psychologist Jean Twenge argues that we may be on the brink of a major mental-health crisis among the generation born between 1995 and 2012, a crisis she links to smartphones and social media. This has nothing to do with campus speakers. Berkeley students aren’t suddenly going to develop psychopathology because Mr. Shapiro is making a brief appearance on campus.
Regardless of whether we are facing a true increase in serious mental health problems among college students, limited resources will always be a reality. Imagine how hard it would be for those with physical illnesses if we encouraged people to go to the doctor every time something made them uneasy. Promoting counseling services in response to a campus speaker is like suggesting to people at the gym that they should call 911 because exercise is uncomfortable. It’s supposed to be—that is how exercise works. Likewise, psychological growth requires exercising our mental muscles, and students are perfectly capable of doing so.
There is no compelling reason to believe that young people are so mentally fragile that they should feel personally threatened by exposure to provocative ideas. Our species would have never made it very far if that were the case. In fact, democracy would have been impossible as would have most societal advancements that require us to negotiate emotionally-charged issues. CONTINUE AT SITE
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