Coun­sel­ing and Men­tal Health Ser­vices rec­om­mends these apps to help you with any men­tal health issue you are facing:

CBT Pad: This app is designed for Cog­ni­tive Behav­ior Ther­a­py which allows users to record their thoughts, con­se­quences of those thoughts, and steps to take for fur­ther action.

Super­Bet­ter: This app was made by a game devel­op­er who suf­fered depres­sion and is designed to increase per­son­al resilience through fun games. It teach­es users how to over­come anx­i­ety, depres­sion and PTSD as well as how to cope with an ill­ness, a breakup and griev­ing a loss.

Time Out: Whether you are study­ing for an exam, writ­ing a paper or work­ing on a project, this app gives you break reminders so you can relax which pro­motes pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and clarity.

Relax Melodies: This sleep­ing app has 50 relax­ing nois­es that let you save your favorites and set alarms to help you fall asleep.

On-Campus services provided for students

• Coun­sel­ing and Men­tal Health Ser­vices. CMHS is where stu­dents can go to seek one-on-one ther­a­py, group ther­a­py, psy­chi­atric ser­vices, alco­hol and drug ser­vices, and con­sul­ta­tions where stu­dents and fac­ul­ty can learn more about their ser­vices and how to deal with men­tal health.
• Rain­bow Cen­ter. Locat­ed in the Stu­dent Union, the Rain­bow Cen­ter pro­vides a safe haven for stu­dents of diverse gen­der iden­ti­ties, expres­sions, and roman­tic and sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tions. They pro­vide resources, ser­vices, edu­ca­tion, and advo­ca­cy for all stu­dents who want a wel­com­ing space.
• Stu­dent Health Ser­vices. Stu­dent Health Ser­vices pro­vides clin­i­cal help for stu­dents. They focus on both phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al health by pro­vid­ing sex­u­al assault ser­vices, an advice nurse avail­able 24/7, and help with oth­er health issues stu­dents are having.
• Well­ness and Pre­ven­tion Ser­vices. Well­ness and Pre­ven­tion’s mis­sion is to pro­mote pub­lic health ser­vices to stu­dents through edu­ca­tion­al pro­grams, work­shops, and health aware­ness events around cam­pus focus­ing on sex­u­al health and stress man­age­ment. Their events include pet ther­a­py, sui­cide pre­ven­tion week, free STI test­ing, mas­sage ther­a­py, and many others.
• Wom­en’s Cen­ter. The Wom­en’s Cen­ter pro­vides edu­ca­tion, advo­ca­cy, and sup­port for gen­der equi­ty on cam­pus. Their pro­gram, Vio­lence Against Women Pre­ven­tion Pro­gram (VAWPP), is con­sist­ed of stu­dent advo­cates who raise aware­ness about sex­u­al assault across cam­pus and give sup­port and edu­ca­tion­al ser­vices to victims.

Students Helping Students

Stu­den­t’s have also come togeth­er and formed advo­ca­cy groups that help raise aware­ness about men­tal health issues and pro­vide sup­port and edu­ca­tion for stu­dents. One advo­ca­cy group, Active Minds at UConn, helps change the stig­ma sur­round­ed men­tal health.

“We par­tic­i­pate in a num­ber of out­reach activ­i­ties and edu­ca­tion on cam­pus,” Jaime McCur­ry, the fundrais­ing and social chair, said. The club brings guest speak­ers who have dealt with men­tal health issues and par­tic­i­pate in sui­cide pre­ven­tion week by plac­ing 1,100 yel­low flags out the Stu­dent Union.

“This rep­re­sents the sui­cides that occur on col­lege cam­pus­es annu­al­ly,” McCur­ry said. Anoth­er out­reach activ­i­ty they do is going to First Year Expe­ri­ence class­es to talk to fresh­man about cam­pus resources, cop­ing strate­gies, and expe­ri­enc­ing men­tal health issues in college.

While Active Minds talks to all fresh­man, the one ques­tion they get most from stu­dents is how they can help a friend in need.
“A ques­tion I’ve got­ten at a few FYE pre­sen­ta­tions I’ve done is peo­ple ask how they can help a friend who is strug­gling with their men­tal health,” McCur­ry said.

McCur­ry’s response to the stu­dent is to ask their friend the most press­ing ques­tion. “We tell the stu­dents that the most impor­tant thing to do is ask the press­ing ques­tion, no mat­ter how hard it may feel, and that ques­tion is whether their friend feels sui­ci­dal,” McCur­ry said. They also pro­vide them with cam­pus resources, but also remind them that if it is an emer­gency to call 911.

NEXT: Appli­ca­tions 

Across the coun­try, col­lege’s and uni­ver­si­ties are see­ing a dra­mat­ic increase in the num­ber of stu­dents seek­ing help for men­tal health issues. From mood dis­or­ders to thought dis­or­ders, col­lege is the per­fect storm for many men­tal health issues to come boil­ing to the sur­face and many stu­dents are left to fig­ure out how to cope with them.

Mor­gan Madore, a psy­chi­atric reg­is­tered nurse at the Hos­pi­tal of Cen­tral Con­necti­cut in New Britain, says that col­lege stu­dents are the most prone to expe­ri­enc­ing mood and thought dis­or­ders such as anx­i­ety and depression.

“I do think with col­lege stu­dents try­ing to put so much on their plate, it is no won­der they have a lot of depres­sion, lot of anx­i­ety,” Madore said.

There are three main anxiety disorders that student’s face on a daily basis.

“Gen­er­al­ized anx­i­ety, pan­ic dis­or­der, and social anx­i­ety is what we main­ly see with col­lege stu­dents,” Madore said.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder 

One form of anx­i­ety that many stu­dents is called gen­er­al­ized anx­i­ety, which affects 40 mil­lion adults, 75% of which expe­ri­ence their first anx­i­ety attack at age 22.

“Gen­er­al­ized anx­i­ety is what most of the pop­u­la­tion has and it’s when peo­ple are wor­ried about unre­al­is­tic situ­ta­tions that could hap­pen in their dai­ly lives. For stu­dents, this is com­mon because they already have so much to wor­ry about so they might have anx­i­ety over fail­ing a class, fail­ing out of school, not get­ting a job,” Madore said.

The symp­toms of gen­er­al­ized anx­i­ety include irri­tabil­i­ty, dif­fi­cul­ty con­cen­trat­ing, msu­cle ten­sion, feel­ing on edge, restlesness, fatique, and trou­ble sleeping.

Social Anxiety Disorder

Peo­ple who have social anx­i­ety dis­or­der feel scared, embar­rased, judged and reject­ed in social situations.

The symp­toms of social anx­i­ety dis­or­der include:

•  Very anx­ious about being with oth­er people.
• Self-con­scious in front of oth­er people.
• Afraid that oth­er peo­ple will judge them.
• Wor­ry­ing for days or weeks before a pub­lic event.
• Stay­ing away from pub­lic places.
• Hav­ing a hard time mak­ing and keep­ing friends.
• Sweat­ing or trem­bling around oth­er people.
• Feel­ing nau­seous or sick to your stom­ach in public.

“Social anx­i­ety is espe­cial­ly hard for col­lege stu­dents because col­lege is all about social­iz­ing so this can impact oth­er areas of a stu­den­t’s men­tal health,” Madore said.

Panic Disorder

Peo­ple with pan­ic dis­or­der expe­ri­ence pan­ic attacks where they have a sud­den and intense fear of some­thing which leads to the heart pound­ing, sweat­ing, short­ness of breath, and the feel­ing of being trapped.

The symp­toms include sud­den attacks of fear, feel­ing out of con­trol, wor­ried about the next attack, and avoid­ance of places where an attack has already happened.

“Some kids expe­ri­ence pan­ic attacks while they are in class which hin­ders their aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance and make them fear going to that class all togeth­er,” Madore said.

In a 2015 Nation­al Col­lege Health Assess­ment sur­vey con­duct­ed by the Amer­i­can Col­lege Health Asso­ci­a­tion, 21.9% of stu­dents said that with­in a year, anx­i­ety affect­ed their aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance. They recieved low grades on exams or projects, get­ting an incom­plete in a course, or drop­ping a course entirely.

Madore attrib­ut­es an irreg­u­lar sleep and eat­ing pat­terns to the increase in stu­den­t’s deal­ing with these dis­or­ders. “How can stu­den­t’s take care of them­selves and prop­er­ly cope with what they are feel­ing when they are doing so much and don’t even have time to prop­er­ly eat or sleep,” Madore said.

Col­lege stu­dents should be get­ting around eight hours of sleep a night, but they only get around six to sev­en hours a night. “When stu­den­t’s are up at night and can’t fall asleep, their minds race with a mil­lion dif­fer­ent thoughts that increase anx­i­ety,” Madore said.

To cope with this, Madore sug­gests stu­dents pri­o­tize their time effi­cient­ly so they do not feel overwhelmed.

“If you have a sched­ule that you fol­low with set tasks that need to be done, when they need to be done by and when you can com­plete them, it makes it eas­i­er to deal with a busy day. This way, you won’t feel over­whelmed and you can get a good night’s sleep and wake up feel­ing bet­ter,” Madore said.

NEXT: Resources

Let the all-nighters, gallons of RedBull, and stress beyond belief commence!

Finals week is the week from hell. Stu­dents spend all week cram­ming an entire semes­ter worth of knowl­edge into their brain in the hopes of pass­ing their classes.

Accord­ing to a Tab sur­vey of 3,000 stu­dents who self-report­ed their study habits, UConn is ranked 35th for the num­ber of hours spent a day study­ing for finals with an aver­age of 7.8 hours.

The dif­fer­ence between UConn and the top five schools was pret­ty big with UConn’s old con­fer­ence rival aver­ag­ing 5 hours more a day in study time — Syra­cuse topped the list with an aver­age of 13 hours a day.

Prince­ton came sec­ond with 12.5 hours and Tulane trailed behind with 12.3 a day, 4 hours more than UConn. Buck­nell and Brown spend about the same num­ber of hours a day with an aver­age of 11.5 and 11.2 a day.

Report­ing for Radio and TV, Fall 2016
Reporter, Writer, Editor

Last year, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut made a bid to the Big 12 Con­fer­ence, a move that would have meant a big­ger ath­let­ic con­fer­ence and more oppor­tu­ni­ties for the uni­ver­si­ties ath­let­ic depart­ment. While the Big 12 did not end up tak­ing any more schools, it did leave stu­dents and fac­ul­ty won­der­ing what it would have been like to switch conferences. 

Jeffny Pally was struck by a fire department vehicle in October.

Six Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut stu­dents were arrest­ed by Con­necti­cut State Police in con­nec­tion with the death of UConn stu­dent, Jeffny Pal­ly, back in Octo­ber, WFSB reports.

The 19-year-old was struck by a uni­ver­si­ty fire depart­ment vehi­cle as she was sit­ting on the ground out­side the fire sta­tion on North Eagleville Road. The vehi­cle was respond­ing to a call that turned out to be a false alarm.

The six stu­dents arrest­ed were Patrick Calla­han of Mans­field, Math­ew Moll of Mans­field, Austin Cus­to­dio of New York, Dom­in­ci Godi of Bolton, Dylan Morose of Mans­field, and Jonathan Polan­sky of Mass­a­chu­setts, WFSB reports.

Calla­han, Morose, and Moll, who were the hosts of the par­ty that Pal­ly attend­ed, were charged with eight counts of per­mit­ting a minor to ille­gal­ly pos­sess alco­hol, accord­ing to the arrest war­rant. Cus­to­dio was charged with the sale or deliv­ery of alco­hol to minors after he was accused of buy­ing the alco­hol for the par­ty. Godi, the social chair­man of the fra­ter­ni­ty, was charged with con­spir­a­cy to com­mit sale or deliv­ery of alco­hol to a minor after deliv­er­ing the alco­hol to the par­ty. Polan­sky, who was on the lease of the house where the par­ty occured, was charged with eight counts of per­mit­ting a minor to ille­gal­ly pos­sess alcohol.

Police issued war­rants for the stu­dents after an inves­ti­ga­tion revealed that Pal­ly had been drink­ing at an off-cam­pus par­ty at the Kap­pa Sig­ma fra­ter­ni­ty on 51 Bax­ter Road and had a blood alco­hol con­tent of 0.25, three times more than the legal lim­it, accord­ing the arrest warrant.

Some of the stu­dents arrest­ed admit­ted to hav­ing a par­ty, but hav­ing a bounc­er at the door check­ing iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and hand­ing out wrist­bands to peo­ple over 21 who could drink. How­ev­er, eye­wit­ness accounts claimed that they were not check­ing people’s iden­ti­fi­ca­tion or giv­ing out wristbands.

All six men have been released on bail and will appear in court on March 8th.

UConn police denied a comment.