Stress is a known trigger for a great many mental health disorders that emerge in late adolescence and young adulthood. Those are some serious conditions (some of them potentially fatal, as this tragic story demonstrates)-- and parents who want to know what a college has (for real) as a track record for managing the known rate of such emergence should be able to find it. That is not currently the case.
Rates of addiction, arrest, etc. are also information that parents and prospective students should have at hand, too. Such things can paint a realistic picture of what the level of student support versus crushing stress and isolation looks like on any given campus.
This generation seems fine-- better than fine-- on the surface. But I've known quite a few kids like this girl, and when you know a half dozen or more kids who graduate near the top of their classes, are seemingly motivated, have a bunch of merit aid, and still go off to college only to come home in less than a full year, shattered emotionally-- something is very wrong.
These are kids who came from homes like those of the members here, by the way. GOOD homes. Not homes where these kids were overly helicoptered or Tigered or anything. It's mystifying to me on some level. They are for some reason feeling a level of anxiety and stress over their performance that previous generations simply did not.
I've seen this myself. It's an issue many of my RL friends have been struggling with in their college kids. When I read this article it hits close to home as I know quite a number of young adults struggling through university with anxiety & stress. It seems almost universal among those who I know at top tier universities.
One thing I noted from the article that I see in the students I know. Most of them will accept the "top rated" school they get into irregardless of fit. I remember asking one young woman a few years back why she chose X Ivy League, and she honestly said "it was the best school I got into."
