Author: Sydney Jennings

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.

Pho­to Cred­it: Syd­ney Jennings

How­ev­er, not every­one thought it was as com­i­cal, with one stu­dent com­ment­ing, “This is so fuck­ing stu­pid. If you real­ly cared about ani­mals then you would stop eat­ing them for every meal.”

But Josh did not let the haters get to him and respond­ed, “If humans real­ly cared about ani­mals we’d stop eat­ing alto­geth­er.” Sassy, yet inspiring.

When asked what he hoped to do if elect­ed, Josh said that he is pre­pared for any­thing that comes his way.

“Obvi­ous­ly as a com­muter stu­dent, some of my con­cerns revolve around park­ing and gen­er­al prob­lems of the like.”

Every UConn stu­dent who has to dri­ve to school in the morn­ing knows that park­ing is a huge con­cern on cam­pus. Most stu­dents have to leave their house 30–45 min­utes ear­ly just to have that slight chance of get­ting a good park­ing spot, but most end up park­ing in lots that are far away like C‑lot or I‑lot where they have to take a bus to campus.

Being a com­muter stu­dent him­self, Josh knows first hand how bad the park­ing real­ly is.

“I have had to walk 20 min­utes from I lot to my first class even after arriv­ing to cam­pus 45 min ear­ly,” he said.

Josh vows to do what­ev­er it takes to fix this issue if he is elected.

“It’s unac­cept­able that I should have to pay $244 for a park­ing pass when decent park­ing is that scarce,” he said.

Josh want­ed to ded­i­cate the paint­ing to Gam­ma Sig­ma Sig­ma, the com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice soror­i­ty that had the rock paint­ed before them.

To vote for stu­dent elec­tions, stu­dents can vis­it the elec­tion web­page to cast their bal­let. Elec­tions end Sep­tem­ber 21st at 11:59 pm.

UConn senior and Sec­ondary Social Stud­ies Edu­ca­tion major Elaina Ram­pol­la says that stu­dents, along with the rest of the coun­try, are in shock, and as long as Trump does not make any hasty deci­sions, peo­ple will come around to his Presidency:

“The peo­ple that sup­port­ed Trump are excit­ed obvi­ous­ly, but the oth­er demo­graph­ic of peo­ple that sup­port­ed Clin­ton are absolute­ly shocked.

“As long as some­thing incred­i­bly dras­tic isn’t announced by him, I think that peo­ple will start to accept him as pres­i­dent, in real­i­ty its the best option for peo­ple right now.”

UConn junior, Lynsey Grze­jszczak says that the elec­tion has had a neg­a­tive impact on our cam­pus, as many peo­ple have been neg­a­tive­ly labeled for who they supported:

“It seems that no mat­ter who you sup­port­ed you’re labeled as that person’s vot­er, and seen in that neg­a­tive light,” she said.

The His­to­ry and Human Rights major went on to say that despite people’s char­ac­ter­is­tics, if they vot­ed for Trump, they were seen as “a cer­tain type of person”.

“All the char­ac­ter­is­tics that make you who you are are no longer rel­e­vant and you are is then seen to be like him because you’re ‘sup­port­ing his ideals’ when in real­i­ty you might not… This elec­tion became about the can­di­date who was the less­er of the two evils,” she said.

If one per­cent of those who’d vot­ed for Gary John­son had vot­ed for Hillary, Trump would not be our cur­rent President-elect.

“I know so many peo­ple who couldn’t bring them­selves to vote either Hillary or Trump, but also want­ed their note to count which is why they didn’t go third par­ty,” she said.

UConn senior Ken­neth Thomp­son agreed that both can­di­dates were not suit­able for the presidency:

“I could not trust either can­di­date. The emails from Clin­ton were hor­ri­ble and Trump is a busi­ness­man, not a politi­cian,” he said. How­ev­er, the Psy­chol­o­gy major believes that cam­pus life will remain the same for him for the remain­der of his time here.

“Life will be the same for me and as long as Trump doesn’t do any­thing too crazy, I think we’ll be fine,” he said.

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma is remain­ing hope­ful as well as he addressed the nation today, root­ing for Trump’s suc­cess in lead­ing this coun­try, and sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments are pan­ning out across campus.

“Hon­est­ly I’m opti­mistic in hop­ing he can do good. He under­stands busi­ness so I’m hop­ing he helps with the debt and trade,” Grze­jszczak said.

Dur­ing Hillary Clinton’s speech to her sup­port­ers,  she expressed that she is sad about los­ing the elec­tion, yet she hopes that the coun­try will come togeth­er after this elec­tion. Clinton’s vision is no doubt an attain­able goal.

By Syd­ney Jennings

MANSFIELD–Outdated ele­va­tors, lock­ers, doors, bath­rooms, walls and doors are appar­ent issues at the Mans­field Mid­dle School.

Lead­ing into the build­ing, there are large stains on the brick
wall sur­round­ing the entrance, as well as rust around the edges of the doors and stains at the bot­tom of the doors.

The ele­va­tors are fair­ly old and have scuff marks on the doors, as well as dam­age to the bot­tom of the doors, such as yel­low marks and chipped paint.

“The ele­va­tors are clear­ly out­dat­ed, which makes it more unsafe for the stu­dents to ride in,” Board of Edu­ca­tion mem­ber Sarah Lacombe said.

The lock­ers are in sim­i­lar con­di­tion with dents, scuff marks, and miss­ing locks on some of the doors.

The bath­rooms are out­dat­ed and have dam­age to the stall doors, as well as decay­ing sinks with rust around the han­dles and brown col­or­ing in the sinks.

“It is clear that our schools need to be repaired and updat­ed with new facil­i­ties so it is safer for the chil­dren,” Lacombe said. “It also just looks more pre­sentable if our schools are updated.”

The pub­lic schools in Mans­field date back to the ear­ly 1950s and are in dire need for repairs at an esti­mat­ed cost of $1,323,000, which have left the res­i­dents divid­ed between those who sup­port the ren­o­va­tions and those who oppose them.

The ren­o­va­tions are part of the Cap­i­tal Improve­ment Project, which is meant to iden­ti­fy need­ed cap­i­tal projects and to orga­nize the financ­ing and tim­ing of those projects, Super­in­ten­dent of Schools Kel­ly Lyman said.

“The Cap­i­tal Improve­ment Project will take a few years to accom­plish,” Lyman said. “It is a very long and rig­or­ous process.”

The mid­dle school gym­na­si­um has become a tar­get for need­ed ren­o­va­tion at the mid­dle school includ­ing a new floor, divid­ing wall, cur­tain and bleach­ers, accord­ing to Lyman’s facil­i­ties pre­sen­ta­tion to the school board.

The most cost­ly ren­o­va­tion to the gym­na­si­um would be the floor, which has mis­matched wood­en tiles and a sig­nif­i­cant amount of wear and tear, which would cost between $157,000 and $175,000 to replace, accord­ing to the presentation.

In a sur­vey tak­en of 30 Mans­field res­i­dents, 90% of them were in favor of these ren­o­va­tions even with the high cost of repairs.

“My chil­dren attend the mid­dle school and I place a high val­ue on phys­i­cal edu­ca­tion,” Mans­field Mid­dle School Asso­ci­a­tion mem­ber Marie Hodrin­sky, a par­ent in the town, said. “But they should not have to have their class in a dingy, old gymnasium.”

The boys and girls lock­er rooms are also in need of ren­o­va­tions, accord­ing to the presentation.

The lock­er rooms have unus­able show­ers due to the decay­ing show­er heads and tile floor along with rusty, dent­ed met­al lock­ers, which would cost around $180,000 to fix, accord­ing to the presentation.

The over­all cost to fix the gym­na­si­um, includ­ing the boys and girls lock­er rooms, would be $873,000, accord­ing to the presentation.

One res­i­dent said that the class­rooms should be the top pri­or­i­ty if the schools do get renovated.

“Chil­dren go to school to learn and they spend the major­i­ty of their time in the class­room so they should have a mod­ern space where they are com­fort­able and can focus,” res­i­dent Bill Latz said.

The class­rooms will be a pri­or­i­ty, Lyman said.

“Our stu­dents deserve a nice space to learn. That is the whole rea­son they come to school,” Lyman said. “They need tables that do not have writ­ing on them, chairs that don’t wob­ble and com­put­ers that are not outdated.”

In 2006, the board start­ed talk­ing about the fate of the schools, but a deci­sion was not made, Lacombe said.

“The town was divid­ed on whether the town should have ren­o­vat­ed all the schools or knock one or two [of the three ele­men­tary schools] down,” Lacombe said. “This cre­at­ed a big debate so a deci­sion was not made at that time.”

The sur­vey also found that 10% of Mans­field res­i­dents said that the schools should be razed.

“I think the town needs to start fresh instead of adding onto the already aging schools,” res­i­dent Chris­tine Reil­ly said.

Lyman said she is aware of the need­ed ren­o­va­tions and hopes to address them in the future.

“We know our build­ings have sev­er­al infra­struc­ture needs and that many of the spaces with­in our schools will not con­tin­ue to be ade­quate,” Lyman said.

Lyman will be address­ing these issues in the future with a facil­i­ties study, which will help deter­mine if the pro­posed ren­o­va­tions should be done or if any­thing else needs to be fixed as well.

“I am look­ing for­ward to this study because I expect it to be more than a ‘state of the build­ings’ report,” Lyman said. “But rather a process that helps us define our needs and con­sid­er sev­er­al options while get­ting lots of input from our community.”

Some par­ents said they hope that the study will allow them to express some con­cerns about the schools and get some of the issues fixed.

“I hope the board will not only hear our con­cerns, but see them first-hand in the facil­i­ties study so they will make more of an effort to fix the prob­lems,” Hodrin­sky said.

Some of the oth­er prob­lems being looked at include new solar pan­el roofs, mod­ern cafe­te­rias, and a new $450,000 boil­er at Vin­ton Ele­men­tary School, accord­ing to the superintendent’s facil­i­ties presentation.

Some res­i­dents said they are pleased with the pro­posed renovations.

“It is impor­tant for our schools to be up to date because the stu­dents need good resources and a good envi­ron­ment to learn in,” res­i­dent Noel Popoli said.

Anoth­er res­i­dent said that the ren­o­va­tions have been a long time coming.

“It is 2016 and many oth­er schools are being updat­ed with new tech­nol­o­gy and facil­i­ties and I think it is time for Mans­field to do the same thing,” Latz said.

The school board vot­ed and approved the pro­posed ren­o­va­tions in Jan­u­ary that were shown in Lyman’s facil­i­ties presentation.

Some res­i­dents said that they were pleased with this approval.

“I think this is a good step for­ward for our schools to get a much need­ed makeover,” Popoli said.

 

By SYDNEY JENNINGS | Decem­ber 8, 2016 

A 2015 study done by the Cen­ter for Col­le­giate Men­tal Health showed a sig­nif­i­cant increase in demand for stu­dent men­tal health ser­vices. Among the 93 schools sur­veyed, results showed a 5.6 per­cent increase in enroll­ment, while the num­ber of col­lege stu­dents seek­ing men­tal health help increased 29.6 per­cent between 2010 and 2015.

 

Depres­sion, gen­er­al­ized anx­i­ety, and social anx­i­ety are the three main issues stu­dents face. Anx­i­ety account­ed for 20 per­cent of the top con­cern that coun­selors rec­og­nized in stu­dents. Depres­sion ranked sec­ond with 15.8 per­cent, while rela­tion­ship prob­lems were list­ed third with 9.4 percent.

Stu­dents at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut are fol­low­ing this nation­al trend. UConn has seen a 20 per­cent increase in demand for ser­vices each year in the past five years. Anx­i­ety is the issue seen the most, accord­ing to Eliz­a­beth Crac­co, UCon­n’s Direc­tor of Coun­sel­ing and Men­tal Health Services.

“One sol­id find­ing in our num­bers and nation­al­ly is the shift from depres­sion being the pri­ma­ry con­cern five years ago, to more recent­ly anx­i­ety being the num­ber one pre­sent­ing con­cern,” Crac­co said.

The larg­er influx of stu­dents seek­ing men­tal help has many peo­ple ques­tion­ing why.

“Some have the­o­rized that this gen­er­a­tion of stu­dents is ’emo­tion­al­ly frag­ile’ because more than any oth­er gen­er­a­tion they are engaged in high­ly struc­tured envi­ron­ments where par­ents inter­cede read­i­ly in prob­lem solv­ing,” Crac­co said.

With this belief, stu­dents are thought not to have prop­er cop­ing skills lead­ing to more stu­dents seek­ing aid.

UConn Coun­sel­ing and Men­tal Health Ser­vices is mak­ing changes to their sys­tem of care to try and keep up. “We’ve are con­tin­u­ous­ly eval­u­at­ing and shift­ing our sys­tem in an effort to keep pace with grow­ing stu­dent demands,” Crac­co said.Over the last three years, UConn hired 4.5 new full time clin­i­cal staff, devel­oped “drop-in” con­sul­ta­tions, and expand­ed the refer­ral net­work for stu­dents who need more long-term care.

The preva­lence of anx­i­ety among stu­dents led UConn to tai­lor their men­tal health ser­vices to deal with it specifically.

“Our con­tin­ued offer­ing of modal­i­ties and resources to stu­dents that can sup­port over­all well­ness and pos­i­tive men­tal health, tar­get­ing the num­ber one pre­sent­ing con­cern of stu­dents. Anx­i­ety is a great con­cern of ours right now,” Crac­co said.

Some of the new resources being offered include yoga-based stress reduc­tion, retreats where stu­dents can either get away for a day or a week­end and reflect and de-stress, and apps and videos that can be accessed 24/7 by students.

Next: Men­tal Health Aware­ness