Another rant on mental health

[kellinator]

From the August 23, 2004 issue of Newsweek:

"MIT admissions dean Marilee Jones says she's looking to enroll 'emotionally resilient' students. 'If we think someone will crumble the first time they do poorly on an exam, we're not going to admit them,' she says. 'So many kids are coming in, feeling the need to be perfect, and so many kids are medicated now. If you need a lot of pharmaceutical support to get through the day, you're not a good match for a place like MIT.'"

Wow, how wonderful to see such sensitivity in a person working with teenagers.

There are so many things that offend me about this statement that I don't even know where to start. Are Prozac and Ritalin overprescribed? Certainly. Are there students with mental health issues who would be better served in smaller, more supportive environments than the pressure cooker of MIT? Without a doubt. Is it fair to expect universities to bear all the responsibilty for the problems of troubled students? I don't think so. Do some of these students need to just suck it up and deal? Probably. But still...

To me, what Dean Jones seems to be saying is, "There's so much pressure on students to be perfect, and we want to make sure they can do it without drugs. Because, you know, it's not real if you can't do it without drugs. Antidepressants are for wusses."

What about diabetic students who need insulin? Technically, that's pharmaceutical support. Can you imagine the outcry if Dean Jones said this, and rightly so? I believe they have something called the Americans with Disabilities Act that says you can't do that.

Perhaps MIT is trying to dodge some of the responsibility it must bear for creating an environment where suicides and nervous breakdowns are very real issues. They may be legally adults, but most eighteen-year-olds aren't ready to deal with extreme pressure, especially on top of huge life changes like college usually involves (moving, being away from your support network...). Maybe MIT doesn't feel that expending funds on decent mental health care is a worthy use of their dollars. Never mind the old adage that says "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

During a final exam at the end of my first semester of Vanderbilt, I burst into tears and left the room to sob for twenty minutes. I got an A on that exam and went on to graduate summa cum laude. I suppose Dean Jones would have called me one of those problem students and rejected my application?

Or maybe I'm just bitter because I couldn't cut it in my grad school experience (at a school whose mental health services were much harder to obtain than those at Vanderbilt). So let's think over some of the others with mental health issues that MIT might pass over. Lincoln, Beethoven, Churchill, Van Gogh, just about every great writer of the twentieth century... would you tell them they couldn't come to your school?

EDIT: the1mouse has helpfully provided this link to the article.

Comments

[dwivian]

But the inverse is NOT true -- failure to achieve certain arbitrary scores on tests is not necessarily an indicator of inability to succeed in academia, medication or otherwise. This was my point -- if we set a standard of needed focus, retention skills, testing skills, writing ability, etc, as a means to evaluate people, we can provide those levels in advance and cause applicants to self-screen. If people KNOW that MIT is a high-stress environment and are aware that they require medication to manage the normal day-to-day stress, going to MIT is a bad idea.

That's what the quote means -- if you are on medication, you should give extra consideration to what that means for you before applying.

[thystle.livejournal.com]

First, if people know that MIT is a high-stress environment and are aware that they require medication to manage does not necessarily mean that going to MIT is a bad idea. If they are on their medication, they can function as fully as anyone else who wants to go to MIT.

Second, I completely disagree about what the quote means, but since there is no way for either of us to know what she meant when she said that, there is no point in arguing it.

[dwivian]

Having taken meds, and known plenty that do, I have to say that I never took them to function as fully as others, but to function at all. Neurochemistry is so messy that adjusting it reminds me of the adage "measure with micrometer, mark with chalk, cut with axe." And, I've watched as the efficacy of the meds fails over time (in fact, I've never met ANYONE who didn't have to have their dosages tweaked or changed outright from time to time), which means that the only way to know it's time to fix things is to be experiencing the problems the meds are supposed to be fixing. Having that happen in the MIT crucible is, reasonably, on the list of "not good things."

I feel the quote means exactly what she says -- if you do not have highly developed coping skills then the stress is going to wash you out, and they have such a high application rate that they could have let a different student in that COULD have succeeded. If you know this of yourself, that you have stress issues, perhaps you should consider a different avenue to a degree.