How do Harvard Students Spell Relief?

You slept through your last midterm, three irate section leaders are demanding papers or else, your best friend has abandoned you for his thesis, and it's pu-pu platter for dinner again. Oh yeah, and it's raining.

What do you do?

"Take a break, take a run, see a movie, give yourself some time to relax," says Susan Pollak, a psychology intern at University Health Services. "A lot of depression can be attributed to exhaustion," she says. Simply getting away from whatever is causing the trouble can be a solution.

When the weather isn't as gloomy as the rest of the undergraduate population, exercise can be another solution to the moody blues. "There have been studies that show that depressed people respond extremely well to regular exercise, especially aerobic exercise," she says. "Runners' high may, in fact, be an antidote to depression," the UHS mental health specialist adds.

Pollak says that other kinds of antidotes have negative effects. "Alcohol acts as a depressant--a lot of people will try to escape from depression through drugs or through alcohol, and they'd be better off going to talk with someone," she says.

The part of the academic year right before spring break in late February and March is a notorious time of the year for stress and depression among students, especially for seniors, say the experts at UHS and the Bureau of Study Counsel.

"I think for seniors in general, this time of the year is stressful because they're thinking of leaving," says M. Susan Repetto, associate director or the Bureau of Study Counsel.

With thoughts of computers gobbling up chunks of their senior theses and batting with midterms, seniors must contend with stresses associated with graduating, losing college friends, starting off a career. College students on the brink of entering the real world are frequently over-whelmed by such stresses in their second semester, she says.

"It's a time when [seniors] feel like they should be happy--everything's finishing up," but instead, many get depressed, Repetto says. "It could seem comical if you could stand back far enough."

Pollak says it's important for overworked and underpaid students to try to keep their perspective on things. "One thing that often helps people who are going through mild depression is to know that they are not the only ones who get depressed," she says.

Depression can be triggered by a wide variety of things. Even the amount of exposure to light a person gets, experts say, can play a vital role in mental health.

"The theory behind seasonally affected depression is that limited amounts of light can trigger depression," says Pollak, who says that February is a particularly difficult month for students. Experts claim that students are more likely to get depressed during the winter months when daylight hours are shorter and sunlight is less intense.

"When it's grey outside, it's easy to feel the blahs--some people seem to react quite strongly," says Repetto.

Kathy M. Kniepmann, health educator at UHS, says many students do not seek out help even when they need it. "I think that everyone gets depressed," she says. "Some people need more help than they think they need."