Sienna Jackson/ Roundup
On Sept. 20, no one at the Health Center could spare a moment.
“We’re in the middle of a mental emergency,” said Beth Benne, the center’s director. “We have a student who needs our immediate attention.”
Two days later, on Sept. 22, students are rotated through the waiting room of the Center, coming in, sitting down, going in to see a provider, leaving.
The cycle continues steadily throughout the day.
Students need care, and in keeping with recent trends, mental health services are in high demand.
The Center’s two contracted clinical psychologists work a combined 21 hours a week, Monday through Thursday.
On the first day of classes, both were completely booked, for the first time in Benne’s 18-year career at Pierce.
“They see them for a lot of depression, and stress,” Benne said.
This follows what may turn out to be a national trend in colleges and universities across the country, according to preliminary results from a survey by the American College Health Association.
A total of 912 Pierce students participated in the 300-question survey in Spring 2010, the first time that Pierce College has participated in such a survey.
The biggest disclaimer of these results is a skewed age demographic. The average age of the participants was around 22 years old.
“We have students ranging from under 13 to their 60s, 70s and 80s,” Benne noted.
While the findings haven’t been published, early data shows that students at Pierce are dealing with increased levels of stress, which can impact health and academic performance.
Some of the factors impacting academic performance according to the results are stress, work, lack of sleep, the flu, and finances.
In response to the findings, the Health Center is preparing a classroom outreach presentation on stress management, planned to begin around midterm season.
“Stress can cause a whole host of problems,” says Dr. Babak Govan.
Govan is one of the Center’s two contracted psychologists, and has worked at Pierce for over two years.
Besides bad academic performance, not paying attention in class, memory problems and a weaker immune system, Govan says that stress can even affect your personal life.
“Individual’s who are stressed don’t perform best in relationships,” he said. “Students could see their relationships begin to deteriorate.”
So how can students deal with stress?
“Nip it in the bud as soon as possible,” Govan said. “I think it’s good to find simple, practical ways for people to deal with stress in their lives. But to be successful in the long term at combating stress, people have to look at the patterns of stress in their lives. Oftentimes, the way we’ve learned to respond to situations leads to more stress.”
Dr. Babak Govan provides stress cube to his patients in need. (Amber-Rose Kelly)