We Need Prevention, Not Reaction

When I was in 8th grade, I spent an hour every Wednesday packed in a poorly lit room with the rest of my gym class, giggling uncomfortably as our health teacher lectured us on STDs, drugs, and proper birth control. Our teacher—a funny, sarcastic man who managed to put even hormonal tweenagers at relative ease hearing the word “vagina”—would go through the anonymous “Question Box” where we had submitted a combination of goofy and serious questions. We would then talk openly about relationships, sexuality, and substance usage. I am grateful for those Wednesdays, but I realize now that our curriculum was missing a key lesson plan.

In that classroom, I thought the main health problems adults faced were from the devastating effects of external factors—unprotected sex, tequila, cocaine. But when I entered high school, I quickly realized that no one had ever taught me how to handle a whole different set of crises. Throughout the years, friends would come crying to me in classes or over the phone, self-diagnosing themselves with depression or anxiety disorder while refusing to seek professional help.

No one had ever taught us the clinical definition of mental illness. No one had ever taught us what was happening inside our own minds. No one had ever taught us what treatments were available. And so we muddled through, taking turns serving as each other’s unqualified therapist. We Googled symptoms online, learning about mental disorders only once they had already taken root in our lives. We failed to understand that they can and deserve to be treated.

My experience in high school was not unusual. One in five children suffers from a mental illness, and almost every student knows a friend who has struggled with mental illness. It is not surprising, then, that studies find treatment rates for young adults are disturbingly low. Just 44.7 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds receive treatment for their depression, even though half of all chronic mental illnesses begin by age 14. The average delay between the onset of mental illness and the start of treatment is a staggering ten years.

Given its pervasive impact on young adults, mental health has become an increasingly popular topic in campus debates and newspaper op-eds. Harvard and America as a whole are scrambling to address this public health crisis—and they are fighting an uphill battle.

Students are entering adulthood without ever receiving a basic, scientific education on mental illness. Harvard and other universities end up having to play catch-up, providing students with the resources and education that they should’ve been receiving all along. Although schools regularly devote precious classroom hours and funds to alcohol, drug, and sexual education—and rightly so—mental health programming is often relegated to brief, one-time presentations.

There has been a recent movement for schools to support students already diagnosed with mental health issues. While this approach is a necessary part of the solution, it is not nearly sufficient. Imagine if, rather than providing alcohol education in classrooms, administrations decided to only support students already diagnosed with alcoholism. There would be a public outcry. Yet when it comes to mental health issues, our approach is precisely that. We are reactive, not proactive, and students are suffering the consequences. Early intervention can greatly benefit young adults. Yet they often delay seeking help because they’ve never been taught that it is available or that they might need it in the first place.

A new curriculum does not have to be groundbreaking. For many students, even learning the definition of “anxiety disorder” would be a drastic improvement. Just as students are told to exercise regularly and wear sunscreen, they also ought to gain a basic understanding of how to protect their mental health. Additionally, students should learn about some of the most common conditions they might suffer from and potential treatment options. Then if they suffer a mental health crisis down the road, they will already have a list of resources handy.

This education would also help remove the dangerous stigma that surrounds mental illness. It would normalize the subject and provide students with a better-educated and more empathetic support system. After all, we teach students how their bodies work in health class—Isn’t it time we teach them how their brains work as well?

Jenna M. Wong ‘20, a Crimson editorial writer, lives in Hurlbut Hall.