Social media – good or bad for mental health?

Exploring a mixed effect fueled by filters and realities

Alissa Parker ‘s social media feed masked the horrific reality of her life as a college student mentally abused by an ex-boyfriend.

But she never discussed it because social media clouded her judgment.

“I never talked about it because in social media you look good, you don’t want to show that you’re having difficult problems,” said Parker, now a senior nursing major at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut.. “So instead of dealing with my problems, I posted all the time on social media how happy I was, look what I’m doing because I thought that was a good way to kind of cope with the situation for lack of a better term.”

Parker, then a sophomore, knew she had to confront reality and do so without delay. She turned to her resident assistant for help and got the support she needed. She is an RA herself now, works in Quinnipiac’s admissions department as a tour guide and is a member of the Gamma Phi Beta sorority.

Parker’s use of social media as a mask to hide her personal pain is just one example of how the apps that seem to dominate the lives of the young can work to harm them while seeming to offer endless connections to good times.

“Yeah, it may look like I have my life together on paper and on social media because I’m posting with my boyfriend and I’m posting with my sorority sisters and I look like I’m doing great, but there are times inside I feel for a lack of a better term again, dead,” she said.

She’s not alone.

Nick Calderaro is a senior finance major who works in Quinnipiac’s campus life office, runs an organization on campus, serves as a first-year seminar peer catalyst and is an orientation leader, among other things.

He too has seen social media used as a mask.

“So it’s just so artificial in the sense that you can put whatever you want out there and you know, just make things out to be what they’re not at all,” Calderaro said.

An informal survey of Quinnipiac students in class Facebook groups yielded some telling results about social media and its effect, with a lean towards it having a mix of both a positive and negative effect.

Participants were asked how many social media accounts they use and if they believe their usage has a positive effect, a negative effect, a mix of both or indifferent.

Social Media and Mental Health: Survey Results

Some 150 respondents participated in a Google Forms survey posted in Quinnipiac Facebook groups. One question posed was: do you believe that social media has had a positive effect, negative effect, a mix of both or indifferent on your mental health or personal judgment?

Some 117 students responded to a Google form posted on Facebook that asked questions about the number of accounts they had and whether or not social media generated positive or negative mental health effects, a mix of both or indifferent.

A startling 89 respondents reported that social media generated a mix of positive and negative impacts on their mental well-being.

The idea of social media presenting unrealistic expectations and perhaps seemingly perfect lifestyles is no secret and fires up the idea that it may have an adverse reaction on someone’s mental health.

Quinnipiac counselor Kenneth Wenning, who holds a doctorate in clinical social work, said social media creates an environment of unrealistic expectations among individuals who believe their top goal in life is to be happy.

“I think it does give some people an unrealistic sense of what life is all about because life is always a mixed bag,” Wenning said. “It’s good stuff and it’s tough stuff and it’s drudgery and it’s boredom, it’s not always you know, what’s going on.”

Kenneth Wenning PHD, LCSW

Quinnipiac Counseling Center, Counselor

He also referenced an example drawn from a recent conversation with a patient.

“So, I had a graduate student tell me the other day she was done with social media, she stopped all of it and she said to me ‘and I discovered, I still have a life’ but it’s like life is now being lived vicariously almost in a way,” he said. “When you look at what’s going on with these people, and these people and all of the monitoring and you know, thinking about everybody else’s life and I think that is a real problem.”

But social media is not the evil that some may think.

After the Super Bowl ended on Feb. 3, 2019, content featuring the “world_record_egg” aired on Hulu. The storied egg had been posted on an Instagram account that wanted to break the record for being the most liked post. Through a series of multiple posts, the egg cracked a little bit more each time. When it finally did crack on Super Bowl Sunday, it revealed a message about cracking due to the pressure of social media.

The World Record Egg, now the most-liked photo on Instagram, teamed up with @hulu to raise mental health awareness after #SuperBowlLIII. #EggGang #TalkingEgg #WeGotThis pic.twitter.com/bPBcoHs5JY

— Early Today (@NBC_EarlyToday) February 4, 2019

Mary Dunn, an assistant teaching professor of advertising and the instructor of the Strategies for Social Media course at Quinnipiac, said the campaign worked in unexpected ways.

“They didn’t truly think it was going to turn into what it was and it wasn’t until they had the audience like of ten million that they sat down and decided what they were going to use it for and I think it’s a happy story, a charming story, an inspiring story that they’ve decided to use it as a platform for social messages and campaigns like mental health awareness,” Dunn explained.

MaryDunn copy.jpg — Mary Dunn

Quinnipiac School of Communications, Assistant Teaching Professor of Advertising

Dunn said social media can drive powerful narratives but not all social apps are on-board with that idea.

“So platforms like Twitter resisted this for a really long time,” Dunn said. “They wanted the character limit, they wanted to force people to be succinct in their messages but when you’re succinct in your messages and you limit yourself, it can lead to misunderstandings, to oversimplification and so Twitter had to expand as well, right, and so I think that’s part of why they’re still alive and now they’re actually doing well this year, go figure.”

She also talked about the method of “scrubbing your social,” which involves unfollowing accounts that might be harmful to an individual. Olamide Gbotosho is a sophomore and one of Dunn’s students. In high school, she dealt with depression and said social media had a big influence in that.

Gbotosho has “scrubbed her social” before and finds it effective. While she has unfollowed some accounts of famous individuals that have an “ideal of perfection,” she has also followed others that play a more positive role.

“Sometimes I follow some positive Instagram accounts, so I do have that also,” she said.

There’s also the opportunity for social media to be used as a community builder of sorts for those suffering from mental illness. John Naslund, who holds a doctorate in health policy and clinical research, is a Harvard Research Fellow and has been doing studies on the benefits of peer-to-peer networking and support on social media.

“So we know that this peer-to-peer support is happening naturally online, it’s happening in forums, it’s happening in all kinds of places, well how can we kind of tap into that, tap into these positive interactions to actually support the delivery of some kind of services or programs that can be really helpful,” Naslund said.

While this research has promise to possibly provide support, he made it clear that it should not be replacing the care from a professional.

“This isn’t something that would be a replacement for existing mental health care, it’s most definitely not, it’s not a replacement,” Naslund said. “But what we see across the United States and especially in other parts of the world, the vast majority of people who have mental illness don’t have access to adequate care or don’t have access to adequate services and don’t have access to adequate support most of the time and this is consistent across the entire country where people really, the vast majority of people with mental illness don’t have the support they need.”

Naslund said that despite its negative associations, social media could be used to support mental health.

“Where we really need to think about this going forward (is) just thinking of the future of how social media can potentially be used for promoting mental health is I think really making sure that people who live with mental illness or have mental health issues are informed about how they can use social media in a positive way,” he said.

While social media may be a potential support network moving forward, Gbotosho believes that the best source of comfort may be in the form of the people in your respective circle.

“If you’re looking for comfort, social media isn’t the best place to find it,” Gbotosho said. “Rather finding it through the people that you surround yourself with.

The future of social media as it pertains to mental health and society in general might be uncertain.

But Allissa Parker, Nick Calderaro and Olamide Gbotosho may be able to sleep soundly tonight, knowing that hope may be on the horizon and that they are not alone.

Just Not Enough

As student demand for mental health services increases, Quinnipiac tries to keep up

By Dorah Labatte

At first, everything seemed fine. They were seeing each other consistently. It felt like things were really going somewhere and maybe someday he would be her boyfriend. The fall semester came to a close and the two said goodbye. She didn’t know it would be the last she would ever hear from him.

Spring semester began and she didn’t hear from him at all. He chose to no longer be a part of her life.

“Spring semester I was wildin’…I was going really hard. Partying really hard. It’s not ‘cause I was having fun, It was ‘cause I was sad,” Em said.

The sophomore college student at the time turned to alcohol and partying to treat her heartbreak. Instead of feeling better, she grew sadder over time. As a result, Em stopped going to class.

“I wasn’t talking to anyone. I was isolating myself and was sad that I was isolated … isolation from my roommates was the tipping point,” she said.

Em had a breakdown at her tipping point. Tears fell down her face and thoughts of guilt and shame filled her mind.

“I don’t remember the feeling of wanting to die then but I was really depressed,” she said.

Her roommates reported the incident to residential life. Soon after, Em began seeing a counselor at Quinnipiac’s health and wellness center.

“I think the counseling center was helpful in the fact that they were able to recognize that I needed help beyond what they could provide,” Em said. “If I went to the services alone I don’t think I would’ve been able to get that…being healthy again … from what I understand the counseling center is for short term problems.”

via GIPHY

Quinnipiac University offers counseling services to students who experience any major changes in behavior and would like to seek treatment. But as the student population grows, the counseling center finds itself struggling to meet the demand.

Screen Shot 2017-12-10 at 1.52.54 AM.png

As of November 3, with several weeks to go before the end of the semester, there were 596 new appointment requests from students. By contrast, at the end of fall semester in 2016, there were 570 new appointment requests. There has also been an increase in need for more frequent appointments. More students are requesting to be seen multiple times per week as opposed to weekly or bi-weekly.

In addition to university counseling services, students have established a group to provide peer support.

“Freshman year I failed out of the college I was going to and a lot of it was because of the depression I was experiencing,” said Ryan Freitas, vice president of Quinnipiac’s chapter of NAMI, the National Alliance of Mental Illness. NAMI estimates that 75 percent of mental health conditions begin by the age of 24.

Freitas, alongside NAMI President Peter Chlebogiannis, chartered NAMI on campus in January 2017 in hopes the club would act as a support group for students experiencing any mental illness.

“For me it’s really about creating an environment in a community … at least a place you can go where you at the very least know you’re not alone. I think the more people you have the better it becomes for everyone when people realize, you know, there are a lot of people, peers, going through the same stuff they are,” Freitas said.

NAMI’s advisor, Kerry Patton, has been the director of counseling services at Quinnipiac since 2013. Patton has experienced the change in issues facing students at Quinnipiac over the last four years.

“The top 3 that we see…and this is what students report, are anxiety, depression and relationship issues,” Patton said. Depression used to be the primary one and then anxiety was second. That has shifted a bit and I think a lot of it is related to mobile devices and social media. This generation isn’t as active interpersonally.”

Patton said students’ worry about Instagram likes or being liked in general could be the reason anxiety has become the No. 1 issue the office of counseling services deals with.

Social anxiety disorder is the fear of being judged and/or humiliated by others. According to the National Comorbidity Survey, a U.S. poll on mental health, social anxiety disorder is the third most prevalent psychiatric disorder in Americans, following depression and alcohol dependence. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) reported a study conducted by Gabrieli Lab using brain imaging to show how the behavior of people with social anxiety disorder behavior changes based on their view of images of people versus scenic images. The study found that patients responded more to images of people’s faces.

Quinnipiac students who suffer from social anxiety disorder see many faces every day. Residential students in particular may rely on on-campus counseling services to seek help in treating their anxiety. With the increase of students requesting services over the last two years, Quinnipiac’s counseling services have been struggling to accommodate students that request services.

“We have seen about a 35 percent increase in students requesting to be seen by our counselors, over 500 students,” said Courtney McKenna, the director of student affairs at Quinnipiac University.

McKenna has worked at Quinnipiac since 2008. She started off in the Office of Campus Life then moved to the Office of Fraternity and Sorority life in 2014. In 2015, she started working in the Office of Student Affairs as a case manager, where she encountered many students who experienced a spectrum of mental illnesses.

Screen Shot 2017-11-25 at 10.15.10 AM.png

Students who go to counseling do not fit a specific profile. However, a vast majority of students who request to see a counselor live on-campus and have a 3.0 grade point average or higher.

Screen Shot 2017-12-05 at 4.03.01 PM.png

The International Association of Counseling Services, Inc.(IACS) recommends colleges/universities have a minimum of one full-time college counselor for every 1,500 students. For nine years, Quinnipiac employed five full-time counselors. The ratio at QU from 2008-2017 was one full-time college counselor to every 1,860 students. The increasing demand of students requesting counseling services has forced the university to take action.

Monique Drucker, Quinnipiac’s vice president and dean of students, is committed to making sure the university meets the minimum recommendation.

“At one point we had one counselor who had resigned from Quinnipiac to open her private practice and we weren’t able to replace that position for a year and half …” Drucker said. “That was a matter of budget and finance … so we were down to four counselors. Last year in the fall, we were able to hire another counselor.We had a wait list, which we don’t like to have.”

Other nearby universities, such as Wesleyan University and Fairfield University, have a fraction of students compared to Quinnipiac, yet have a bigger counseling staff. Wesleyan University (WU) has 3,206 students and seven professional counseling services staff members and six student externs. WU has one full-time counselor for every 712 students. On the other end, University of Hartford has 6,737 students and five professional counseling services staff members and five practicum students. University of Hartford has one full-time counselor to every 1,684 students.

Screen Shot 2017-12-10 at 2.28.08 AM.png

“We were just approved to add a part-time counselor which gets us closer … We’re still falling a bit short of our goal,” Drucker said.

As of November 13, Quinnipiac’s counseling services had one full-time counselor for every 1,691 students. In order to meet the minimum recommendations set by IACS, Quinnipiac must hire one more full-time counselor.

Budget and finance has been a hurdle for meeting student affairs’ goal. Drucker’s emergency proposal justified the immediate need for an additional counselor. As a result, counseling services welcomed a part-time hire. Hiring an additional full-time counselor must be done during the budget and personnel approval process next year.

“We have therapists who can do outreach, who can do group therapy … but the fact is, they are every hour on the hour booked with students,” Drucker said. “I don’t have staff in that area to be able to utilize their knowledge, licensing and skill set to do the programming I’d want them to.”

Upcoming plans

Drucker, Patton and Mckenna have been working alongside Mark Thompson, executive vice president and provost, to design a plan that meets the needs of students in regards to counseling services.

“I think when we’re always putting out fires and just dealing with the thing that’s right in front of us we can’t step back to figure out what other things we could put in place to prevent things,” McKenna said.

McKenna believes the university should work toward providing more preventative education. She added that the school has outgrown the current health and wellness center and it is time for a new building.

Screen Shot 2017-11-27 at 11.49.48 PM.png

“There are no current plans to renovate it or expand it but it is something we need to look at,” Thompson said.

Although Quinnipiac administration has not made any official plans to build a new space for a health and wellness center, they are working on adding more resources to counseling services.

“I don’t think the school ignores the prevalence of mental illness,” Em said.

Em said although counseling services did not work well for her during her sophomore year, she felt supported in her time of need.

###

Quinnipiac’s discussion on mental health

By Jenelle Cadigan

Mental health awareness was the topic of discussion this past Monday night at Mind Body Soul — the second series of the Your Voice Our Quinnipiac events.

Screen Shot 2017-11-15 at 10.34.46 PM.png

Student government organized the event and the Student Veteran Organization (SVO), Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA), and Quinnipiac’s new chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) all co-sponsored, with input from student health services as well.

“Stress relief is good for everyone, but especially right now preparing for the holidays … and preparing for finals … it can be very difficult to balance the academic goals and the personal goals,” said Kerry Patton, Director of Health and Wellness at Quinnipiac. “Managing and learning techniques on how to take care of yourself is really important.”

Patton also discussed with the audience the fact that mental illnesses are not always seen as equal to physical illnesses.

“If someone’s struggling with a certain medical diagnosis we tend to react to things a certain way, and if someone’s struggling with a psychiatric or mental [diagnosis] it seems like it’s different,” she said.

Tatyana Youssef, vice president for student experience, wanted the event to be a way to end the stigma.

“Wherever you’re at in life, mental health is real,” said Youssef. “It’s prevalent. It’s in our society. You know, in previous generations it’s always been there but it was taboo to talk about.”

But students were ready to talk about it. They got up in front of their peers and shared personal stories about their struggles.

Alex Hartman, a member of SVO and army veteran, shocked the audience with his story about his biggest failures in his life, the first being a suicide attempt.

“The first time I tried to kill myself I was 16,” he said.

Hartman described his method to hang himself, and his failed plan. He had tied a bed sheet to a ceiling fan, put it around his neck, and when he let go, the fan couldn’t hold his weight and he fell to the ground.

But it continued. Years later, in the army, Hartman made a second attempt – his “second biggest failure” as he describes it. He said the barrel of his gun was in his mouth, when his friend walked through the door and asked him to go play basketball outside.

“That was the hoop that saved my life,” Hartman said.

Jordan Atchley, president of SVO, also got up to speak.

“I found out my sister was killed in a drunk driving accident I was 12 years old,” he said. “We had just gotten off for Christmas break.”

Atchley explained that that day, he saw his parents “crumble” and he felt he had to be strong for them, so he internalized all of his pain and sadness in order to support them. But then, tragedy struck his family again.

“I was a sophomore in high school, my brother had just gotten back from Iraq, and they told us that he had liver cancer,” Atchley said. “Little did we know he had a year left to live. So when I was a junior in high school, I lost my brother.”

The two tragedies led him to engage in risky behavior, like racing motorcycles. He said he wasn’t trying to kill himself, but he didn’t think it’d be such a bad thing if it happened. Then, he joined the military, which he says taught him a lot about resilience, and allowed him to redirect his emotions towards something good.

Atchley is now studying to become a lawyer.

“One day I hope to change the laws that allowed the guy that killed my sister to be out of jail in three years,” Atchley said. “That’s the driving force behind me.”

Amanda Herbert, SVO Member and Air Force veteran, spoke about the importance of noticing lifestyle changes in yourself or those close to you, as it could be a sign of depression.

“You’ve been taking more naps. You’re just sleeping more in general but your sleep isn’t as good, so you’re sleeping more. And then you’re so tired that you need that candy bar or some kind of not really nutritious snack to get you through the next hour or the next class or the next thing,” Herbert said. “You start living in these one little hour time slots and forgetting that you have a body that you need to nourish so that your mind and everything else can follow through.”

According to Patton, student health services has seen about a 33% increase in the amount of students filling out intake forms for counseling appointments. She says the top three things students come to counseling for are anxiety, depression and relationship issues.

“I think it’s normal to feel stress every day,” Patton said. “Sometimes stress motivates us, sometimes anxiety motivates us. These are natural feelings that you’ll experience.”

Patton said the most important thing is being able to manage your stress at a healthy level so that it doesn’t overwhelm you.

“Yes you need to study a lot, you might need to prepare for a paper or an exam, but [you need] to also take that time for yourself, even if that time is ten minutes … to take care of yourself,” she said.

And while you’re taking care of yourself, don’t forget to do your part to help others too.

“Even the smallest little things that you do for other people can have a huge impact,” said Peter Chlebogiannis, president of Quinnipiac’s chapter of NAMI. “Even an extra second, an extra hello, an extra smile, an extra wave. A lot of us are going through a lot of hard stuff and the more we can be there for each other the better.”