Best Unnoticed

It's the summer of 2001, my first quarter in college, and I'm in a private dorm on the University campus.

I remember arriving there, placing my belongings in various locations with a picture of Monkey, my favorite horse, and a picture of Russ, my favorite dog (who would join me the next quarter), at the head of my bed.

On the table, there was a small card that basically said, if you experience these symptoms, feelings of sadness or hopelessness or have thoughts of harming yourself, you should go to the student health center or call this number.

I remember that so well because it was the first instant in my life that I accepted I had a mental illness, depression, and that I needed help for it.

Lately, as I walk along on campus at the local community college, I've been wondering what would have happened if I never saw that card on the desk back in the summer of 2001. How long would I have waited to receive treatment?

At the University student health center, I saw R.M., the NP, and she prescribed Prozac for me, consoling me that soon, I would feel better.

Here, at this community college, there are no such cards for students. There are no posters confronting the issue of mental health. There is no outreach. There are no pamphlets of peer support for mental illness. In fact, the campus seems to ignore the issue right-out-of-hand. If my fellow students are any evidence, young adults today know very little about psychiatric disease, despite the fact that depression is the number one productivity killer in the world, not just in the United States. And, of course, it kills more than just productivity--it can kill the person as well.

My mother explains that the community college simply doesn't have the money to investigate the mental illness of students nor can they afford educated health professionals to deal with the onslaught of psychiatric disease.

I propose a plan to her--every single class in the beginning of every term, spend 10-15 minutes talking about depression symptoms and, of course, suicide prevention. Ten to fifteen minutes, tops.

And Mom acutely asks, "And who are you going to hire to give these talks?"

I didn't have a good answer to that because I naturally assumed (correctly or incorrectly) that your average professor or instructor would feel uncomfortable leading the discussion.

But what a difference it could make. It could literally save someone's life.