In a challenging and ever changing environment such as college, people can be overwhelmed by the stresses and pressures that it comes with. Individuals are thrown into a competitive setting with their peers and are usually left without their usual support system, which can prove to be depressing and frustrating. If these issues were to continue over an extended period of time in a person’s life at college, it could be extremely detrimental to someone’s mental health and overall outlook on life. That is why there are so many discussions on college campuses to address this, in order to help people struggling with this issue.

In order to get a feel of how people were doing here at UD, I figured I would ask some pretty straightforward questions to get some honest answers. I asked the following questions.

“Has your mental health changed since getting to college? If so, why.”

“What are some ways you use to keep good mental health in college?”

In my own experience, I’ve been able to keep a good mindset this first year and I really wouldn’t say my mental health has changed very much. I’ve learned that keeping a happy work/life balance had proven really beneficial to me through my first year in college. Therefore in my free time, I do the things that I have the most fun doing. I love working out and playing basketball when I can, and I’m an avid NBA2K player. I’ve also started to teach myself how to invest, and that’s also a hobby of mine I enjoy. When I created these questions, I was expecting the people I surveyed to be a lot different then me, and I was curious to see people’s responses.

I surveyed a total of six people from UD using an anonymous survey. To my surprise, four of the six people in the survey said that their mental health did not change when they got to college, and only two of them said yes. In one response, a person stated that “I would say my mental health has deteriorated, just because of all the stress and responsibilities that come with being a college student” while another stated “I think my mental health has improved. It’s good vibes all the time here and I like the environment.” When asked about good ways to maintain good mental health, many people cited doing their favorite hobbies to relieve their stress. One respondent stated that “Exercising, hanging out with friends, don’t save everything till the last minute, and to not hold everything in, go talk to someone”. Overall I would say that it was interesting to see the responses people have and it made me optimistic about students welfare here at UD.