More college students going to mental health centers

DENVER — College can be a stressful time. And now those stresses are sending more students to mental health centers than ever before.

Hunter Long And Yazman Ezimi are music students. Their biggest source of stress centers around academics.

“Homework,” Long says. That’s probably the biggest thing that causes stress.”

Another stressor is finding that school life balance.

“We both have jobs and we both go to school full-time and we’re trying to make a career,” Ezimi says. ” So it’s really hard to balance all of that so that causes stress.”

The American College Health Association surveyed students in 2016. Forty-three percent of them said they felt more than average stress in the last year. Seventeen percent of college students were diagnosed with or treated for anxiety problems during the past year, and 13.9 percent were diagnosed with or treated for depression. When the group surveyed students in 2011, only 11.6 were diagnosed or treated for anxiety and 10.7 percent for depression.

Dr. Michael Malmon is a counselor at Metropolitan State University of Denver and has seen the evidence first hand. Read more and watch the video…