For this assignment, I decided to send out a Google form to my floor and asked them all two questions. You could say that I cheated the system and didn’t have an actual conversation with my friends, however, I have a different perspective. Mental health, especially your own, can be difficult to talk about for some people, so by sending out this Google form, I was hoping to get some honest answers since they are anonymous. I wanted a truthful, genuine answer where people were able to express how they felt about their own mental health, without being embarrassed about their answer.  I was able to get sixteen responses from my friends about how they felt about their mental and/or physical health.

I asked everyone two questions, the first being “Has your mental health changed since arriving at UD and what do you think the reasoning for that change is?” Although I did get a response along the lines of, “I’m going insane — too much beer, too little water,” the other answers weren’t very shocking. Most people saying they were stressed all the time due to poor time management and a large workload. One response that caught my eye was, “Yes it has changed a lot. I think that since there is so much more independence here, there is a lot more room for stress and anxiety.” This was interesting to me because I never thought about the freedom here as a stressor. We were all thrown onto campus, handed a crazy amount of freedom that no one has ever had before and had no idea what to do with it. We then had to manage how to find a new group of friends, find our classes, figure out what to avoid in the dining hall and basically hit the reset button as we entered a new stage of our life. Another response added, “The new independence and self-reliance definitely took part in some stress and uneasiness in the beginning.” This freedom that most of us craved for most of our lives is now one of the main stressors for many students.

The second question asked was, “What are ways that you have improved either your mental and/or physical health and how has it impacted your experience here?” A lot of students mentioned that they go to the gym or go for a run to destress to keep themselves active. On the other side of this, one response mentioned, “it’s really hard to find time to go to the gym with all of the work I have to do. I have noticed a change in my mental health since I used to work out all of the time and now feel like I don’t have the time for it” This was interesting to me because I found myself in the same situation as this person. I have found it really difficult to get to the gym, not because I don’t want to but because I feel like I don’t have enough hours in the day to get everything done. Just the idea that I haven’t been going is stressing me out, meanwhile others are using it to destress and escape from their schoolwork. It’s weird to me how one person’s stressor can be another’s outlet. Another response mentioned how they have found it easy to cope with their mental health because it is easy to talk about. They said, “Since everyone is in the same boat, it’s really easy to talk to everyone about mental health and have people who can relate to you.” Who knew we needed everyone to be insanely stressed all at the same time in order for it to be easier to talk about our mental health. In order for it to be “easy to talk about,” everyone has to be in the same hectic state of mind.

I feel as though mental health has become a topic of conversation that you aren’t supposed to talk about with others. Our society has normalized hiding emotions and feeling, yet everyone feels the same way behind the masks we put up. Our overall health should be a top priority, and people should be able to talk about it without feeling ashamed or embarrassed about feeling the way they do.