Navigating a world turned upside-down
Need for services rises at CU Boulder
Coronavirus is a thief.
Some of the losses can be accounted for, data plotted out in painful clarity. More than 200,000 Americans dead, 20 million jobs lost, entire industries shattered.
Others are more difficult to track — memories missed out on, experiences never had, relationships unformed. Though young people generally experience fewer severe complications from COVID-19, some are still at a high risk, and ripple effects of isolation, anxiety and loneliness are hitting young people hard.
At the University of Colorado
Boulder, that looks like a sharp increase in demand for mental health services on campus. Students are trying to adjust to changes in almost every area of life, like how they attend class, hang out with friends and shop for groceries. The initial rush of survival instinct from the spring is wearing off, and students are struggling.
“Right now is a different picture than back in March,” said Monica Ng, director of Counseling and Psychiatric Services at CU Boulder. “There’s always this uncertainty that creates a lot of anxiety for our students, the feeling of
loneliness and isolation. They’re not able to do what college students normally do, not able to go out and do their regular activities and routines. It creates some concerns.”
Classes are harder because professors are trying to make up for the online format with more assignments and because of the mental and emotional strain of being a person in 2020.
This is the most difficult semester junior Roxana Pezeshki has experienced by a landslide.
“My grades are dropping, I’m completely isolated, I have so much homework all day I can barely get outside to go on a walk and I’m only taking 13 credit hours,” she said. “It feels like there’s not a lot of understanding and as much as I’m reaching out for help, there’s nothing I can do other than drop out.”
But as grueling as the past eight months have been, CU Boulder students, faculty and staff also see bright spots.
Campus mental health providers are able to reach more students through virtual therapy sessions. Students such as junior Sudenaz Kiroglu have taken the pandemic’s isolation and chosen to create a virtual community of hundreds of friends.
There are low-cost mental health services available through places such as the Raimy Psychology Clinic, where CU Boulder doctoral students provide therapy for students, staff and community members.
There is also strength and hope in talking about the hard things.
“A lot of us are struggling behind closed doors,” Pezeshki said. “I’ve realized from talking to friends that all of us feel this way, but we don’t want to talk about it because we don’t think anyone else feels this way. We don’t want to be complainers, but I think there’s a difference between complaining and getting support.”
Meutal health ueeds risiug
Between 2019 and 2020, CU Boulder’s Counseling and Psychiatric Services saw almost double the number of after-hours calls and behavioral health sessions at the beginning of the semester.
The department recorded 635 behavioral health sessions for August and September 2019 and 1,188 in 2020 — an increase of 87%. After-hours calls increased from 59 to 115, or 95% in August alone, and appointments and consultations rose from 6,213 to 6,796 for both months, a 9% increase.
Counseling and Psychiatric Services — referred to on campus as CAPS — braced for a rush in students seeking help when campus shut down in the spring, Ng said.
But with students prioritizing finding a safe way to get home and adjusting to an upended life, there was no initial rush — not until this summer, when cases started to tick up.
“I think it takes a while for people to handle the immediate survival needs, to understand what this virus situation is about,” Ng said.
Students say they’re lonely, isolated and anxious, and coming up on nine months of a world turned upside down, they’re starting to feel helpless and powerless.
“It is retriggering some trauma for people who have come through trauma before,” Ng said.
Still iu coutrol
Therapists are emphasizing self-care, Ng said, and going back to basics to remind students what things they are still in control of. They can still find new hobbies, connect with friends, go outside for a walk.
But even those small acts can feel out of reach for students such as Pezeshki. Between all remote classes and remote work, she’s stuck in her room, alone, all day.
Pezeshki said she values doing well in school and doesn’t want to fail — but for professors to have the same expectations this semester as they did a year ago is unrealistic.
She sought treatment for depression and anxiety through Boulder County Public Health, and is now taking medication and seeing a therapist.
“I have felt a lot of support from the community of Boulder,” she said. “They told me a lot of other people are feeling this way and are getting help.”
She wishes there was additional support from CU Boulder, like more flexibility with taking classes for a pass/fail credit instead of a grade and lower expectations.
The university has extended the pass/fail deadline until later in the semester, but has not expanded the pass/fail option for almost all classes like campus leaders did in the spring.
“I talked to my advisors and professors, and it feels like they all understand how hard it is, but there’s nothing they can do. It’s not their choice to be completely online, it’s not their choice to not have pass/fail, they have to give evaluations and tests, but I don’t think they can have the same expectations as before,” she said. “I value doing well in school, and I don’t want to fail, but that’s becoming more and more of a reality every day.”
Virtual therapy
Just as professors and students had to abruptly switch to online teaching and learning, therapists were required to switch to teletherapy.
CAPS already used teletherapy, Ng said, but the pandemic means all sessions are now done virtually.
Ng attributes some of the increase in students seeking help to more students realizing they can use teletherapy, even if they live hours away from campus.
“Students who are in Fort Collins or Colorado Springs could not see our therapists in person, but now we can reach them in all corners of Colorado,” she said.
There are also some downsides to teletherapy, such as a student who wants to talk about family issues, but they live with their family and don’t have a private place to go.
“We try to be creative and tell them to go to your car or go for a walk,” Ng said.
The Raimy Psychology Clinic also switched all sessions to telehealth this spring, said clinic director and Associate Clinical Professor Emily Richardson.
Raimy therapists are clinical psychology doctoral students supervised by CU Boulder faculty or licensed psychologists from the Boulder community, and the clinic offers low-cost ses
sions for students and staff, as well as sliding-scale payments for community members.
Raimy has not seen a similar increase in students seeking help, Richardson said, which she attributes to not many students knowing the clinic is an option.
“One of our issues that we’ve had is getting the word out to students that they can access the clinic for services,” she said. “With students leaving campus and going home, there seems to be a barrier in them knowing where they can go for help.”
One way of increasing student awareness is partnering with the College of Arts and Sciences to provide free therapy sessions to firstyear students.
The college already was offering free therapy sessions at Raimy to students living in Sewall Hall, said Professor Eric Stade, who co-chairs a mental health task force in the college.
Expanding it to include all first-year students amid the pandemic made sense, he said.
“We saw there was such a need for mental health services,” he said. “CAPS does a great job, but sometimes they are overbooked or it’s not a good fit, so it’s great to have Raimy.”
Stress, anxiety, depression
The rise in mental health diagnoses among college students is not new, Richardson said. Between 2007 and 2017, diagnoses increased from 22% to 36% among college students, according to a national study by the Boston University School of Public Health.
Stress, anxiety and depression are more likely to have a negative impact on students’ academic performances than getting sick with the flu, according to the American College Health Association.
From fall 2019 to spring 2020, the association’s undergraduate health survey showed increases in the number of college students whose academics were impacted by stress, anxiety and depression.
Students reporting that stress hurt their academic performance increased from 37% to 42%, anxiety increased from 30% to 32% and depression increased from 22% to 25%. Only 7% reported the influenza, or flu-like illness, hurt their academics, down from 16% in the fall.
The key, Richardson said, is to seek help before depression, anxiety or other mental health struggles become unmanageable.
“‘Catch it before it gets worse’ is a great time to start therapy, but if you’re struggling to get things done, you’re apathetic and struggling to see the end of this, it’s time to get help,” she said.
‘Trying our best’
As someone struggling with chronic pain, fatigue and a nervous system disorder, sophomore Delaney Hartmann is used to asking for help.
This semester is frustrating for Hartmann on several fronts. She already wasn’t going outside very often because she’s at a higher risk for coronavirus complications, but irresponsible actions by her peers — large gatherings, not wearing masks, not distancing — led to a spike in cases and even further restrictions.
Hartmann has been sick for the past six years, and she’s grown a thick skin about people discounting her disability.
“But this pandemic has brought up a lot of frustration for me, because I’ve realized a lot of the general public doesn’t understand what people who are at risk are going through or they don’t care,” she said. “There are a lot of people out there who think that because I’m sick, I should be the one who stops my life, where if it was collective action, we could get through this a lot faster.”
But even amid that frustration, Hartmann said she’s seen kindness shining through in friends offering to help her with errands or getting groceries.
“While there are some people not being responsible during this pandemic and perpetuating the issues, there are a lot of us who are just trying to get through and do the right thing,” she said. “We want to get our degrees, we care about each other and we’re trying our best.”
Junior Sudenaz Kiroglu was struggling with loneliness and isolation when she was home in Turkey during the summer. She posted on the CU Boulder Reddit page, reaching out to try to make new friends.
Within the first day, she had 20 direct messages and she couldn’t keep up with all of the conversations. Kiroglu eventually created a server on the app Discord, where online communities can use different channels to talk about anything.
In a matter of months, Kiroglu’s quest for new friends has turned into Lonely Buffs, a community of more than 600 people who talk about everything from health and wellness to politics and movie recommendations.
“I’ve heard that it’s been very impactful on mental health and keeping people sane,” she said.
Kiroglu now works with a team of volunteer moderators, and the Lonely Buffs server hosts game nights, movie nights and even a live bake-along, all done virtually.
“It’s given me something to focus on,” Kiroglu said. “This is my first time living alone off-campus, so it’s really helped, and I’ve made some really great friends on the server that I can pretty much talk to about anything now.”
Kiroglu said she’s not worried about the server becoming less relevant after the pandemic ends. Lonely Buffs has a meet-up channel that’s popular, though it was disabled during Boulder’s no-gathering and quarantine orders for 18- to 22-year-olds. It’s now up and running again, along with guidelines on group sizes, mask-wearing and distancing.
“I think the server is going to be even stronger,” she said.