When Mentally Ill Students Feel Alone
As Alexa Little, a junior at Yale who left in 2013 and came back this past fall, recently told Bloomberg, “Students who get sick later in the term, or whose chronic health issues flare up unexpectedly, are treated as if they chose to fall ill and punished severely with financial burdens and this complicated process.”
.. Yet, a more cynical interpretation voiced by some students is that Yale effectively treats those with serious mental-health conditions as liabilities rather than as members of the community. A junior studying psychology at Yale who asked to remain anonymous said that the way Yale deals with mental health “creates a culture of shame and silencing and self-silencing,” which makes it hard to “feel that you can speak openly and be heard as a student about mental-health issues.” She added that Yale’s withdrawal and readmission policies make undergraduates unwilling to be open, above all in regards to suicidal thoughts, self-destructive behavior, and debilitating depression. Discussing these conditions, the student said, may lead officials to question whether a student should be at—or is fit for—Yale.
.. Tammy Pham, a senior who was friends with Luchang Wang, said many students at elite schools are so driven to succeed that taking a leave of absence does not feel like an option, even if doing so could be beneficial. As at similar schools, there is pressure at Yale to always appear happy or “okay.”
.. If students who withdraw could return to campus more easily, Smith wrote, the fear of involuntary withdrawal would be less “existential,” and would not “throw students into [a] terrifying mess.”
.. As medical director of the Jed Foundation—a nonprofit devoted to preventing suicide among students enrolled in higher-ed institutions—Schwartz knows of many schools that provide excellent mental-health resources but aren’t doing enough to market and promote them.