College Students and Prozac

What does it mean that there has been an explosion in the number of college students taking psychiatric medication? Does it mean that more students with mental illness are attending college? That people are more willing than in the past to seek treatment for anxiety and depression? That mental illness has been redefined? Or is it something else?

Katherine Sharpe -- a writer who discloses that she took antidepressants while attending college in the late 1990s -- makes a thoughtful attempt to answer these questions in the latest issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. Facing increased stress, competition and pressure on campus, students feel the need to present themselves to others as being without flaws or weaknesses, writes Sharpe. Citing the research of Joseph Davis, a sociology professor at the University of Virginia, Sharpe says that students use medication to protect themselves from experiencing the emotions that they deem unacceptable -- emotions such as “discouragement and loneliness, nervousness and insecurity, jealousy and emotional vulnerability, shame and humiliation, shame and self-blame.” The desire to avoid such emotions diminishes, for these students, the appeal of traditional therapy, any form of which will require some exploration of the unpleasantness they feel. Medication, by contrast, can seem quicker and less painful.

What is going on, Sharpe writes, is a kind of “medicalization” of negative emotions -- a perception that if you experience these emotions, they must be connected to some kind of disorder. What can be lost is the opportunity to explore and reflect on normal negative emotions that may in fact have some significance and meaning. Overall, the emergence of effective psychiatric medications has enabled many students and non-students to thrive and few would argue with that. However, it is unfortunate if these medications also contribute to college students’ sense that they must achieve emotional perfection, and their mistaken belief that those around them have already achieved it. Much research shows that medication and psychotherapy can be more effective when used in tandem than either approach is when used by itself; it would be a shame if college students were to lose the added benefit of therapy because they want to avoid feelings of vulnerability.