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Several students described having pre-existing mental health issues in high school that transferred into to their college experience. It was interesting to note the ease with which students were able to discuss their personal mental health challenges during the interviews. Many of the students commented that they were used to discussing their mental health with people who they are close to (such as family, friends, or counselors). Additionally, students seemed to express a strong awareness of how their mental health concerns were especially prevalent in their first year of college and also how their mental health influenced their ability to be successful or not.

Several of the students I interviewed disclosed that they had or are currently seeking counseling or other forms of therapy. Five out of the ten students I interviewed reported feeling anxious during their first year in college. Four out of the ten students reported feeling depressed during their first year. Though I am not qualified to make any conclusions regarding the clinical nature of the anxiety and depression described, I instead have complied several examples which

the experiences of students who managed mental health concerns during their first year in college.

Lynn was one student who had experienced mental health concerns in high school and those concerns continued to be present for her as she began college. She talked about how her experience with anxiety and depression created social obstacles for her. Her lack of ability to make friends in college meant that she no longer had close friends with whom to discuss her challenges and this caused her to seek comfort and safety in the confines of her residence hall room. Lynn said:

All throughout high school, I had had depression and anxiety issues. I’d seen a therapist for a while because my parents were concerned, but it never fully went away. It just went away enough so that my parents did not make me see the therapist anymore. This is kind of a super stubborn teenage sort of thing, but I came to college and it was still really an issue … And not having like a constant friend group like in high school, I didn’t really talk about my mental health issues…So all the change just kind of exacerbated it and the anxiety was definitely an issue in terms of just even coming out of my room because I would sit there and like not want people to look at me when I came out of my room.

Though Lynn was suffering, she felt the need to hide her challenges from others. She did not want other people to notice that she was experiencing problems with her mental health. This behavior suggests that, as painful as it was, it was better for Lynn to hide these issues rather than to admit she could not handle it alone. This may be connected to her need to meet high expectations that she had set for herself. Her struggle with mental health contradicts the image that she has for herself as a high-achieving student.

Another student, Jimmy, also discussed his preference for isolation over sharing his mental health concerns with others. Jimmy’s embarrassment about his mental health challenges created some social obstacles. In the following passage, Jimmy discusses his transition to living away from home for the first time and explains the difficulty that his mental health created during his transition to a new city. Jimmy said:

Nothing in [the city] is that uncomfortable for me. But sometimes, I have felt uncomfortable - not really because the location - but just like I feel lonely or because I feel depressed or because of anxiety. So yeah, sometimes I feel uncomfortable, but mostly it’s just like mental stuff. I guess just because sometimes I wasn’t healthy [during my first year], sometimes I’d isolate myself just because I just felt, like a strong degree of embarrassment because of my anxiety and like it was hard for me to study or be with other people.

Like Lynn and Jimmy, Emily also talked about how her mental health was influenced by her transition to college. Though the source of her stress seemed to be more specifically related to an incident over the summer before college, Emily’s story provides an example of the juxtaposition between the problems her family was experiencing and the new and exciting opportunities presented to her in college. Emily described how an issue with her sister caused her to experience some major emotional shifts in her first year which left her feeling confused and unsure how to deal with it all. She said:

The summer going into college, my sister had had like two really big manic episodes to the point that she was hospitalized. So it was a very intense shift in my life, going from a very sad period of time where we’re all coping and dealing with my sister’s illness. And then for me to go to college and everything being perfect. It was just kind of like my body was saying like ‘What are you doing, Emily? Like, you were stressed and down in the dumps like two weeks ago and now you're like everything's beautiful, the sun’s out, and like you’re eating popsicles with your parents [at Orientation], like this is weird.’ …I just felt like out of it, like not like myself. And I don’t take any drugs or I don’t drink excessively or do anything like that can alter my state of mind. So it was very evident that there was something wrong with me but I didn’t know what it was.

With the transition to college, Emily had difficulty in processing all that had happened over the summer and was unsure of who she should be or how she should function in her new college environment. Like Lynn and Jimmy, Emily felt somewhat at a loss for what to do and faced these challenges alone.