College students are stressed.  Really, they are.  They can't eat, they can't sleep, they have trouble concentrating and are sometimes irritable.  An Associated Press and mtvU survey found that four in 10 students say they often feel stressd.  Almost one in five said they feel stressed all the time.  One in five has been too stressed to complete schoolwork or be with friends.  Twenty percent also contemplated dropping out of school.

The study also goes into percentage of students with a mental health disorder (13 percent) and whether they stick to their treatment plan (about two-thirds). 

On the upside, six in 10 reported that they are usually hopeful and are enjoying life. 

One of the students quoted summed it up best:

"Everything is being piled on at once," said Chris Curran, a junior at the Albany College of Pharmacy in Albany, N.Y. He said he has learned to cope better since starting school. "You just get really agitated and anxious. Then you start procrastinating, and it all piles up."

Most of my stress came down to poor time management, too.

Late last week, the UK’s Royal College of Psychiatrists released a statement (PDF) saying that women who have abortions might be at risk for mental health breakdowns. The College recommended that women be told about potential mental health problems before choosing to have an abortion.

According to The Sunday Times,

Some MPs [Members of Parliament] also want women to have a “cooling off” period in which they would be made aware of the possible consequences of the abortion, including the impact on their mental health, before they could go ahead.

Right. This is one of many similar efforts that attempts to “protect” women from abortion. Women who are considering abortion should be presented with all relevant medical findings, including those about mental health. But such findings are often tied to a set of incredibly one-sided policy proposals, like this one, which strip the research of its objectivity and credibility.

Popularization of these “cooling off” periods, for instance, promotes the idea that a woman is not fit to make her own decision about abortion—she is emotionally confused, and her tiny girl-brain needs extra time to make such an important choice about her body.

Moreover, folding post-abortion depression into an inflexible argument against abortion reduces the likelihood that post-abortion counseling will be taken seriously. As Reva Siegel and Sarah Blustain write in this fantastic piece in The American Prospect,

The figure of a woman suffering abortion grief invokes a deep truth about mother love that, in different ways, is recognized by advocates across the political spectrum. But the anti-abortion movement is deploying this image to excite acts of public coercion that will not make women, or their families, more natural or loving or free.

Seriously, read this article. It’s a very compelling look at the way people pushing abortion restrictions—like those being advocated in the UK—paint women as helpless victims of biology and pro-abortion advocates.

Inside Higher Ed has a piece up today discussing student gun control activism in the wake of last semester’s Virginia Tech shootings. The piece profiles student-led groups--Protest Easy Guns and Students for Concealed Carry on Campus--that rally around different ends of the gun control debate.

But is gun control really the issue here? I’m all for responsible gun purchase and registry guidelines, but students could better leverage their influence by lobbying for mental health care reforms on their campuses. Andy Guess notes that task forces reviewing the killings “faulted university policies and pointed to the effects of confusing mental health laws” in addition to loopholes in gun laws—but students don’t seem to be picking up that cause.

Universities have a history of distancing themselves from troubled students, sending them packing or to the margins instead of supporting and helping them. Shouldn’t progressives be fighting for effective, accessible mental health care on campus? It’s a more comprehensive solution that gets at the root of the Virginia Tech situation—a student who felt that violence was an appropriate outlet on campus—and benefits students with a variety of mental health needs.

In a follow up to the Delaware State University shooting last week, an 18-year-old student was arrested in his dorm room early yesterday morning in his dorm room and charged with "attempted murder, assault and reckless endangerment, as well as a gun charge."

What we still don't know, after several incidents of teenagers and young adults turning guns on each other since Columbine in 1999 is what exactly makes young men (it has been young men in every instance) do this. There's a conflicted sense both of seeking something to blame. Many people are quick to turn to various cultural influences: music, movies, and violent video games, but it dosen't change the fact that these young men are exposed to all the same things as other young people who lead totally normal lives -- uninterrupted by such violence.

What is left is a much more complicated view of phchology and psychosis. By finding a simple source, it's easier than dealing with people on an individual level. I ceartianly don't know what the answer is, but I think it's something to think about. How do you reach those that feel violence is the only answer?