More Colleges Allowing Students To Leave Class Early For Mental Health Accommodations
Colleges are giving students more time off from classes to address an increased issue with student psychological disorders.
Student psychological disorders are leading many colleges to allow young adults time off for medical aid. In San Francisco, The University of California updated its policies to give students extra time off class in order to attend therapy. This is a growing trend in the United States. The college specifically calls these sessions “medical appointments” to offer students privacy, but just how bad is the ever concerning mental health crisis?
Despite the fact that mental health care and treatments in the United States have grown incredibly, the mental health crisis rages on. Schools, businesses, and even politicians have enacted policies which allow individuals support when experiencing mental problems. Students with psychological disorders are catered to and terminology continues to shift in order to remove stigmas associated with certain disorders. Universities especially have been leaders in raising awareness and offer counseling services, yet the state of mental health for college-aged students is worse than ever.
There are many factors which may contribute to the continued plague of student psychological disorders in the next generation. One, in particular, is obviously pandemic protocols. California had some of the strictest lockdown measures and masking mandates. Students were isolated and vilified for wanting to socialize merely because of the debunked theory that asymptomatic carriers spread COVID-19. In addition, they were taught to fear a virus that was not as deadly or harmful to the general population as predicted and barely affected young people. Masking has proven to discourage people from communicating with one another. All together these practices have left young adults afraid and alone leading to increased student psychological disorders like anxiety, depression, and even agoraphobia.
As if this weren’t enough, the public education system and many colleges are perpetuating identity politics. They reinforce the idea that a woman can have a penis or that men can have babies. Students taking biology 101 may find these lessons conflicting as physical characteristics and individual natural born systems create specific hormones that contribute to both physical and mental health. The increased rate of hormone therapy drugs being prescribed to students experiencing gender confusion has led to an increase in the side effects of these treatments as well, which include: anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts. All of this has culminated in addressing student psychological disorders.
Some colleges are even offering “free” taxpayer-funded transgender health care which covers the costs of hormone therapy. The University of California, San Francisco is one of these colleges. Knowing that they are struggling to help students with psychological disorders, one might wonder if they realize that the very treatments they are paying for cause a lot of the issues that are causing students further mental damage.
Student psychological disorders are a serious issue — one that schools are facing across the nation. Young adults have dealt with unprecedented government imposed restrictions on healthy normal social activities, in addition to being encouraged to medically alter their bodies in order to feel better about themselves. These challenges have done nothing to end the mental health crisis. Many hope that offering time off from school to joining therapy sessions will offer solutions, but skeptics wonder if young adults will over-exaggerate their problems in order to receive these new benefits.
