Personal Counseling and Testing Center hosts National Depression Screening Day today
The Personal Counseling and Testing Center will host National Depression Screening Day from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. today in the second-floor atrium of Murray-Herrick Campus Center.
National Depression Screening Day is a one-day outreach, education and screening event held in October of each year. The program aims to raise public awareness that mood and anxiety disorders are common and often undetected disorders, for which there are many effective treatments. Another aim of the screening event is to identify those students at-risk for mood and anxiety disorders and to provide resources for them.
The UST community is invited to visit the center's table in the atrium to pick up information about depression and anxiety.
Some facts about depression and college students:
- According to the APA’s HealthyMinds:
- One out of four young adults will experience a depressive episode by age 24.
- Nearly half of all college students report feeling so depressed at some point in time that they have trouble functioning.
- If left untreated, depression can lead to suicide. Suicide is the third-leading cause of death for those aged 15 to 24 and the second leading cause of death of college students.
- Many young people are coming to college with an existing diagnosis and treatment history. Some of those students might not have made it beyond high school in previous generations, but this means that more young people need access to comprehensive mental health care.
- According the fall 2006 National College Health Assessment from the American College Health Association, 9.4 percent of students reported seriously considering attempted suicide at least once in a 12-month period.
- In 2004 the Mental Health Task Force on Graduate Student Mental Health at the University of California Berkeley surveyed its graduate students and revealed:
- In the last 12 months, 45.3 percent of graduate students had experienced an emotional or stress-related problem that significantly affected their well-being or academic performance.
- Almost 25 percent of graduate students in the survey were unaware of on-campus mental health services.
For more information about depression and depression screening, view the Personal Counseling and Testing Center's home page.
