By Peter Koven
First-year students in Ontario universities faced more pressure in high school than ever before – and that may be leading to increased depression and prescription drug use.
A study being conducted by two professors in Carleton University’s psychology department suggests that first-year students are exhibiting unusually high levels of depression, and the study is attempting to discover why.
“First year of university is a transitional period,” says Hymie Anisman, who is co-authoring the study. “Students are leaving home, they’re making new friends, they’re faced with new challenges and their coping resources are limited.”
Anisman says depression affects about 10 per cent of the population. In comparison, about 17 or 18 per cent of first-year students are experiencing either full depression or sub-syndromal depression (a less severe version). He believes students with the less severe type of depression are more prone to get full depression in their first year, when their coping abilities are still low.
Coping with stress may be particularly challenging this year. The influx of younger students into university, whose experience in high school in Ontario was far more intense than the students before them, may make them more vulnerable to increased stress. Academically, they faced far more pressure, and this carries over into university. Their younger age also leaves them more vulnerable to social pressures.
Most alarming, university officials see a trend of increased prescription drug use in first-year students to counter depression and overall anxiety.
“Fifty per cent of incoming students have experienced some incoming trauma before coming to (university),” says Jane Keeler, a counsellor in Carleton’s health and counseling services. “Life just continues and you’re dealing with new pressures, the social pressures of growing up fast. Economically, politically, everything is becoming more intense and that affects young people.”
The double cohort is a factor as well. The changes to the high school curriculum forced students to cram their workload into four years, and made the application process to university far more competitive.
“I don’t know why, but it seems to me that students have to decide pretty damn early (in high school) what they want to do with their lives,” says Meg Houghton, Carleton’s campus life co-ordinator. “I think they’re doing a real number on high school students, they’re fatigued, and the double cohort has amplified that.”
In other cases, despite the extreme pressure, high schools may not prepare students effectively for the academic rigours of university.
For example, a province-wide rule now forbids high school teachers from deducting marks when students hand in assignments late. Instead, the student’s “industry grade” is affected. This grade, not based on academics but on a student’s professional conduct, appears on the student’s report card, but not on academic transcripts submitted to universities. As a result, first-year students are handing in more late assignments than ever and find that they’re failing assignments for reasons they didn’t experience in high school.
“Professors are wondering where this is coming from,” says Houghton, adding that she has been told that new students require more hand-holding than usual.
But the most difficult adjustments for new students are social. Keeler, a Carleton counsellor, says she believes that the Grade 12 students resent the OAC students. While there is no clear evidence for this, she has observed it on a regular basis from the troubled students who come and talk to her.
“The Grade 12 people who crammed everything in feel the burden of the institutional changes has fallen on their shoulders. Some of them feel they’ve been pushed through faster than they should have been. So they’re carrying this anger around, asking ‘why us?’
The increased number of younger students has affected life in residence as well. Counsellors have seen the younger kids, who have been pushed hard throughout high school, struggling with their newfound freedoms. This has left many of them more vulnerable to new pressures, including entering into sexual activity without relationships and taking on new drinking habits. All of these changes, counsellors believe, leave students more succeptible to stress and depression.
Most disturbingly, the trend of increased stress is expected to continue.
“I would expect that last year and this (coming) year there would be an increase in stress in high school,” says Anisman. “The kids are feeling a lot more pressure now. Before you could get into McGill science with an 83 (per cent), now it’s an 89.”
Houghton wishes more could be done to help young students do a better job of adjusting to their new challenges, but feels the academic and social structures in place make it very difficult.
“It’s such a rigid approach to life planning that we’ve created,” she says. “I think we’re missing something critical here in terms of spurring independent thought.”