Editor’s Note: The columns on this page are written by Northwestern News reporters who wrote the November enterprise series Mental Health Matters. In these columns, reporters reflect on their project and what they learned about mental health challenges faced by college students.
To read the original series of reporting, scan the QR code attached at the bottom of this article
By DEVYN LANSDEN, Editorial Editor
Athletic Impacts
This semester, my classmates and I wrote a series of stories about mental health for our multimedia class.
My portion of the series was about the struggles of stress and anxiety traditional students and student athletes face.
As a class, we all chose this topic because we think mental health is becoming more normal in society, but it still needs to be recognized and understood more.
I learned some things about how students feel in their classes and how hard it is to be a student athlete. I learned a lot from interviewing the chair of the psychology department, Dr. Jason Ferrell.
I thought doing a series on mental health in the paper was a good way for readers to know that struggling with mental health is something so many people deal with every day.
It is a real sickness, and the way people look at mental health needs to change.
Ferrell said no one thinks twice when people break their legs and go to the hospital. But when someone needs mental help, people think it is embarrassing. I know not everyone thinks that, but the stigma is still there when it comes to getting mental health help.
I never thought about how much student athletes have to juggle because they are playing a sport. It is their choice to play, but they still have to miss class for games, and a couple hours of their day are dedicated to practice. During that time, they could be doing homework.
I am glad we did our series over this because it really opened my eyes, and I realized a lot more people struggle mentally and don’t even know it.
I chose to talk about students and student athletes because that is something everyone who reads the paper can relate to.
Being a student is not easy. Being a student athlete adds more to a person’s plate and can cause more stress. I learned a lot about sports psychology from the video we had to do for another portion. I interviewed Brooke Fuller, Northwestern’s sports psychologist, about how she helps athletes perform better in their sports. She said she teaches them how to calm their anxiety whenever they are competing during games.
I got to interview people, and I learned a lot. I am glad we got to work on it in-depth all semester long.
I think the only thing I want people to get from our mental health stories is that it is OK to ask for help. People need to realize it isn’t embarrassing to have mental health issues.
By LANEY COOK, Student Reporter
Staying Organized
Juggling college homework and trying to keep up at work takes a lot out of a student, especially when there are other issues under the surface.
Mental illness has recently been a trending topic after so many celebrities have opened up about their traumas and past hardships.
With this light being shed on the issue, more and more people have started opening up about their mental health.
I talked to two different students from NWOSU – a graduate student and a junior – and they discussed their struggles with trying to maintain both work and school at an equal balance.
They both said they were able to have a flexible work schedule to make sure that school was the first priority, but even with their bosses’ help, it’s still a lot on just one person’s plate.
The grad student works for the State of Oklahoma, clocking in more than 40 hours a week on top of being a full-time student with a 12-hour credit load.
She stays busy but uses a planner and budgeting tools to keep herself organized and know what all she needs to do.
Budgeting can help you not only save money, but you’ll also see where all your money is going.
The junior is a business administration major on top of working as a certified nursing assistant at one of the nursing homes here in Alva.
She said that, even though her bosses are flexible with her hours for school, her job still stressed her out when she wasn’t there, knowing all the things she’ll need to do when she gets back.
We then discussed her diagnoses of epilepsy, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and depression when she was in high school.
She struggled with having to face these disorders while transitioning from high school to college.
I also talked with Taylor Randolph, a psychology instructor who teaches classes over childhood trauma and addiction.
He went into more depth about the “why” behind these disorders. He said that any trauma people go through can somehow tie back to how their childhood was.
Even if you had a nice, normal childhood, it can still leave you with some type of trauma.
He introduced the term “etiology” to me, explaining that it is the cause or set of causes for a disease.
This series on mental health is not meant to just showcase some students with mental illnesses; it is to help you understand that you aren’t alone with your mental illnesses.
This is an opportunity for students all across campus to see how their voices can impact others. Telling your story can be helpful not only to you, but to people around you as well.
By KAYLEA BROWN, Student Reporter
Stigma Changes
Writing a mental health story could easily be summed up in one word: onerous. A big word that many people don’t know the meaning of but still choose to use.
That’s kind of how I felt before writing my story. It’s a big topic that a lot of people talk about, but a topic that people often talk about in the wrong way.
Opinions are opinions, but saying people are insane or psychotic just because they have a mental health disorder isn’t right. This is largely the reason I wanted to write about the stigma on mental health and how it is changing.
This story was incredibly difficult to write for a lot of reasons.
One, because I have family and friends who are diagnosed with a mental illness. Two, there’s a lot to it. And three, the stories that people have shared with me about their mental health struggles were difficult to hear.
I felt a lot of different emotions as I wrote this story.
I felt angry toward society that some people have to go to an extreme to get help. I felt sad for those who don’t have a support system because those around them don’t believe mental illnesses are real. Most of all, I felt proud that the people I talked to trusted me enough to tell me about their journeys with mental health.
While writing this story, I cried a lot more than I care to admit. Not only because my sources trusted me enough with their stories, but also because the stigma is finally changing, and that is something to celebrate.
I learned about the past. I learned about the present. And I learned what some people hope will be the future when dealing with mental health.
As Dr. Jason Ferrell said in my interview with him, “Mental health is physical health, and physical health is mental health.”
We need to put an emphasis on our mental health the same way we do physical health. As the stigma is changing, I believe someday we will be able to do this.
My goal with my story was to make sure that I got everything I could right when it related to the details of the people featured in the story, and to make sure that this topic received the attention it needs to.
I hope that this story can help people see how the stigma is changing and how every person’s journey with mental health is completely different. Because while it’s being talked about more, mental health isn’t easy to deal with, and no one should have to face it alone.
Accepting the Past
By AUSTIN MORTON, Student Reporter
Starting this semester, I did not realize just how big of an undertaking this whole project would be. There were so many moving parts and people to interview. It felt like, if I did not accomplish something for one day, I was already leagues behind.
Not to mention all the rescheduling of interviews that had to be done.
People would agree on one date, and then five minutes before the scheduled meeting time, they would have to reschedule. And this would happen multiple times with each of my interviewers.
Even when you think you’ve planned ahead and gotten everything perfectly set up, a wrench comes flying out of left field and throws everything off. It made me realize just how important planning multiple weeks (maybe even months) ahead is.
Honestly, the biggest struggle was just trying to figure out how to balance all of the work needed for this project on top of every other class, work and my general home life.
Getting sick with vertigo halfway through definitely made things tough, but it was also eye-opening.
With only one semester left, knowing that graduation is right around the corner, I realized that this was just going to be how life worked going forward.
It really put me to the test, and I enjoyed trying to overcome it.
I went in thinking this class and project would be difficult, but it was only as hard as I made it.
When we chose the topic of mental health, I was expecting to hear the stories of some students, and that was it.
However, I left with a much larger appreciation for what some of these students go through on a day-to-day basis.
The way that they hold themselves, even with so much going through their minds, is inspirational to say the least.
One student in particular had gone through tremendous struggles, but until I knew about their story, I would have thought that nothing bad had ever happened to them.
That’s just it, though. None of these students wants to go around and ask for pity over what has happened to them. It shapes who they are as a person, and in these instances, makes them better people.
They appear happier or less easily angered. Even when we would be interviewing about their traumatic pasts, some would laugh about it.
Looking back, there are a lot of things I would do differently: Plan sooner, get things done way ahead of time and put more effort into the work I did.
But this project also shows what happens when you look back on the past too much. These students did not use their past as an excuse for how they could act today, and I can’t look back and wish I’d done things differently.
We have to embrace what we did for better or for worse and use it to help build our future. With the knowledge of what happened, we can grow as individuals and do better.
