Believe it or not, Covid is not the only problem Los Angeles is struggling with right now.
That is especially true for young people. They are the least at risk for Covid but still susceptible to other health problems.
Los Angeles is home to tens of thousands of university students. Many of those students are suffering from anxiety and depression.
What can be done to help?
Recent Study
A recent Dartmouth College study illustrated an alarming trend.
They began tracing freshmen in 2017 in hopes of understanding their behavior. They saw students' stress levels rise and fall. Typically the rises coincided with exams.
However, since the pandemic started, rates of depression and anxiety have soared with no end in sight.
“Before the pandemic set in, some students definitely were depressed or anxious but, on average, students were not scoring high on either of these metrics. We have these massive changes in mental health and behavior due to covid. We’ve never seen anything like that.”-Jeremy Huckins
What Can be Done?
The biggest thing we can do is pay attention.
In part due to this study, Dartmouth and other schools have started to pay more attention to their student's mental health needs.
Andrew Campbell described the new level of attention as a “revolution.”
“There’s a revolution happening, slowly. StudentLife, for example, can pick up on drastic changes in sleep behavior, an early clue of a mental illness.”-Andrew Campbell
He went on to explain that we can use mobile technology to combat mental health issues.
“We need to exploit mobile technology that can sense behaviors and, importantly, give people information about their mental health. It’s a much deeper problem and much more systemic, in a sense.”-Andrew Campbell
My Thoughts
Anxiety and depression, if left unchecked, can lead to terrible outcomes.
That includes death.
Another recent study illustrates this frightening reality.
According to the study, suspected suicide attempts for girls aged 12–17 were up by 50.6% between February 21 and March 20 compared to the same period in 2019.
The first step to fixing any problem is to recognize that it exists.
During the last year, it was natural for Los Angeles to focus all its attention on Covid. Covid was the biggest and most talked-about problem we were facing.
Now, things are getting better. California is largely reopened.
It’s time for Los Angeles to give some other problems, including mental health, some much-needed attention.