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

[moongarden1971.livejournal.com]

FUCK YOU MIT!

[lula-fortune.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's really shitty thing to say, IMO.

I mean, COME ON. What college kid doesn't have a lot of stress? WHO CARES if some people need different things in order to deal with it?

I wanna kick her.

[dslartoo.livejournal.com]

What it says to *me* is that the school is under fire from parents or students who are claiming that the schedule or the pressure is causing them to have mental breakdowns, then are bringing lawsuits. "Oh boo hoo, poor little me, I couldn't deal with the pressure and it made me have a nervous breakdown and now the school should have to foot the bill for my many prescriptions and for my continuing psychological scarring".

In other words, I think they're trying to absolve themselves of any responsibility for said problems, and to get people to deal with their issues on their own -- medicated or not. They just don't want to be blamed for every little thing that goes wrong in a student's life. Which is the way it should be.

And just to reiterate: needing medications to cope with certain problems in one's life does NOT make you weak.

cheers,
Phil

[theashifaction.livejournal.com]

while she was thinking on a grander scale of mental instability, youre paring her comment down to imply she'll reject the entire medicated populace. shes not trying to discriminate against mental disorders, shes trying to take preventative measures in situations where students and parents are too focused on the prize that they refuse to take into consideration the inevitable in some cases.

take into consideration the armed forces. there is a psych exam involved in the higher elite fields to determine who may or may not freak out under pressure, and thats acceptable because ultimately the safety of all involved is at stake. MIT is in the same caliber as special forces. they have a responsibilty to discern who can and can not actually live through the process.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

OMGWTF!!!!!!!

I was told by the head of Stanford's anthro program that I should probably quit grad school, given my "medical issues."

>_

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

MIT is *not* in the same category as the special forces--no other lives depend on your performance.

[theashifaction.livejournal.com]

on your performance, no. on the possibility of you ending up on a clock tower with a semi automatic rifle? yes.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

By the way, Clint's had a number of students who "crumbled" on the first exam, but through his support have come back to do just fine in the class. I suppose that if their teachers were the kind who only focus on the class and not the students, they would have had to drop out. MIT may well have this kind of atmosphere, being a research-focused school (research schools tend to have an unfortunate habit of not caring whether their faculty can actually teach or relate to students). This is a failing on MIT's part, though, not the students'.

[weaktwos.livejournal.com]

At universities like that, you need to be at the top of your game. I'm sure there are a number of students who require medication there and do just fine. I truly think she is referring to those individuals who let the handicap hold them back and expect the rest of the world to make allowances for them. Everyone has their ups and downs at school, but if the whole university needs to walk on egg shells because there's a growing number of kids who spendmore time freaking out than learning, I don't think sensitivity is the issue. They shouldn't be subjecting themselves to an environment that cannot be comfortable in. Maybe they need a different type of learning, maybe they need a different college. That doesn't seem so unreasonable to me.

Furthermore, I'm not sure I would let those guys come to my school. They transcend school. These were people who were gifted beyond institutions. Einstein dropped out, didn't he? I think these were examples of people who didn't need, nor would not have thrived in the structure of a college institution.

[ilexx.livejournal.com]

considering everything that *is* achieved at MIT, what do you expect? other schools that have more of a caring focus on students - well, that's great, they should go to those schools. there's only so much you can put under one roof, only so many hours in a day. i don't think it's realistic to have an institution like MIT slow down and focus on hand-holding, considering everything else it provides in the way of education and research and technology. there are other schools who provide less of that and more personal support, and parents and their children need to consider all avenues, rather than pushing MIT in a situation where the student may need something a little more gentle. and i think that's what she's trying express here. maybe her wording sucked, but *shrug*.

[ilexx.livejournal.com]

i daresay it was more meant in a situation where "crumbling" is used as an excuse for failing and filing a lawsuit.

[crowyhead.livejournal.com]

they have a responsibilty to discern who can and can not actually live through the process.

Thius may be true, but by focusing on those students who "need a lot of pharmaceutical support to get through the day," she's missing the boat -- she should be worried about the people who AREN'T getting the care they need.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, that's not what she said. She said that if you need pharmaceuticals to get through the day, you shouldn't go to MIT. I think that's pretty clear.

I guess MIT shouldn't allow students in wheelchairs, either, because they often get to class late, eh?

By the way, Clint's at UC Berkeley, which is certainly MIT's equal.

[theashifaction.livejournal.com]

those people arent going to get accepted either. this is mit for christs sake not ucla.

[ilexx.livejournal.com]

*shrug* okay.

[the-yellow-king.livejournal.com]

Mmm. Sorry. I have to side with MIT on this one.
As a person who flunked college his first time around due to not being able to hack it, I fully admit it was my responsibility and not UGA's. I was not mentally ready and should not have gone. Period.

The only way MIT can rectify the issue towards students who do not react well to high-intensity schooling pressure is to depressurize and dumb down the curriculum. If they did this, what makes them any different from Joe Blow Community College? Nope. Don't think so.

Also, considering that my second round of university is geared towards teaching college-level history, I have to agree with the non-coddling concept. A student who blows their first exam due to mental breakdown will a) get whatever grade their exam is due and b) have to hope they do better the rest of the semester.

Though most people think it's cliched, "No pain, no gain." pretty much sums up my view. I would treat a complaint of the nature stated somewhere along with complaints that a subject is being graded on the curve. "And your point is...?"

Welcome to college, your first experience at a zero-sum game.

[gaiagurl.livejournal.com]

so then my question is, why is it necessary to turn a school into a pressure cooker? is there some reason you NEED to stress people out in order to educate them?

i wouldn't think so. i think the whole pressure-cooker-college culture is sick, and needs reforming. if i want an education, it isn't to prove i'm better than other people. i take grades as a sign of my own progress, not as a sign of how much better i am than other people.

it's no wonder education in america is going down the tubes. our priorities are way fucked up.

[gaiagurl.livejournal.com]

mit doesn't need to be that stressful, period. the point is they aren't the special forces. people don't go to their school to learn how to be elite soldiers or airmen. they go there to be educated. education is a personal process--how it got turned into this great bastion of competition is way beyond me. yes, reward people for their efforts, but that shouldn't require overwhelming the entire student body with pressure they probably won't experience to nearly the same degree at any other time in their lives.

[theashifaction.livejournal.com]

saying MIT doesnt need to be that stressful is like saying harvard doesnt need to be so selective and the olympics shouldnt be so hard.

[dwivian]

You obviously haven't seen the research that MIT does... and pretty much every student is expected to be involved in some project before graduation.

As a friend of mine who went to MIT said to me, "sometimes it really DOES matter what the fifteenth digit of /e/ is." She never did explain that, either....

[dwivian]

Actually, people go to MIT to be the elite of the engineering world. If you just want an education, go to your local trade school or state college. If you want to be the best of the brightest of your generation's tech people, you have to be in the graduating class of MIT.

[gaiagurl.livejournal.com]

i can't agree with her. there's no way of knowing ahead of time who will crumble and who won't. the medicated kids might do just fine; the supposedly "mentally healthy" kids (if there is such a thing in this country) might not.

i don't understand why any school has to be a pressure cooker. these schools are being paid by parents, by the state, and by the feds to provide an education. the kids showed up, didn't they? so educate them. you don't need to turn them into drooling mental patients to educate them. and the other alternative is not to "coddle them and hold their hands," either. there are lots of alternatives.

for instance, these "kids" are adults, or they wouldn't be at mit... how about treating them as adults? putting a lot of pressure on them just to teach them something really isn't doing that. the medical field has documented the negative health effects of too much stress on people in competitive fields of employment. yay, so let's start putting the pressure on them while they're young and cut even MORE years off their life expectancy. way to go!

(i do realize there will always be stress in life. but the thing is, it's supposed to be temporary. and i don't mean temporary as in "only four years," either.)

[gaiagurl.livejournal.com]

doesn't matter. you're still not there to learn how to engineer under the stresses of battle, bullets and bombs flying at you, whatever. it's engineering for pete's sake.

[dwivian]

Equal, no.

Different cousin, yes.

UCB and MIT are completely different cultures, turning out completely different engineers. People that have gone to either are SURE they'd never want to go to the other school, and rightly so. I think it's mainly an east-versus-west thing, in terms of the crucible education system and what it turns out.

I was accepted into MIT. I didn't go, because I knew I'd wash out. I considered UCB, and knew I'd make it there, but decided I didn't want to go that far from home. Strangely enough, I ended up at Southern Polytechnic, which is about as far from both as you can get....

[gaiagurl.livejournal.com]

nope. i can differentiate between academic selectivity, physical prowess and stressing the hell out of people just so they can brag about the expensive education that cut thirty years off their life expectancy.

albert einstein was the elite of physicists in his day and i bet he didn't have to be turned into a drooling mental patient to get to that point, either. you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear... so there's really no point in destroying the sow's ear, is there.