Making the grade: Student Health Survey

-- Meghan Dusek

A few summers ago, I started running on all gears. I was opening the coffee shop I worked at until 9:45 a.m., getting off in time to make it to a 4-hour condensed summer class and from there I headed off to my internship in Woodbury.

After organizing microfiche for a few hours (...it wasn’t the most educational internship), I headed back to Wisconsin where I worked until midnight with a promotions team in different locations every week.

And I loved it: I was making progress with my degree AND making amazing cash, but understandably it started to wear me down. It wasn’t until mid-August, when my throat was so swollen it hurt to breathe and I could barely lift the milk pitcher to the steamer, that I went to the doctor. The lab results came back positive: yup, MONO. Four letters that spell death to any work or social life.

“Haven’t you noticed how tired you must be?!” the doctor admonished as he wrote out a prescription for Vicodin to ease my throat. Dude, I’ve been tired since approximately the eighth grade, I would have responded had I not been half asleep and unable to force anything up or down my throat.

My story is hardly singular. The University of Minnesota’s Boynton Health Service recently released their 2008 study on Health and Health-Related Behaviors of Minnesota’s post-secondary students, and this year is the first that Metropolitan State University has been included. The mission of the Boynton Health Service is to create a healthy academic community in terms of physical, social and emotional well-being. The participants in the survey were contacted via e-mail over spring semester.

The report endeavors to identify factors that most affect the academic performance of Minnesota students, specifically focusing on physical and mental health; health insurance; chronic and acute conditions; mental health; perception of stress and ability to manage it; financial issues; and health-related behavior (smoking, drinking, gambling, sleeping, etc.).

While the survey provides great insight in the lives of college students as a whole (it effectively debunks the idea that we are all “in our prime”), it was revealing of MSU’s student body—especially compared to other Minnesota universities. Counseling and Career Services Director Vesna Hampel-Kozar provided some insight to the findings.

“To some extent, the results from the College Health Survey are not entirely surprising; our Metropolitan State students are not immune to the mental health issues that affect other college students, including anxiety and depression which are the most common concerns,” she said via e-mail.

“In fact, our students are generally somewhat older and therefore would be expected to have a slightly higher incidence of diagnosis with a mental health condition in their lifetime. We do see in these results a higher rate of post-traumatic stress disorder and panic attacks for our students relative to their peers at other institutions who also took this survey.”

Dr. Hampel-Kozar cites the statistic that, in the past 12 months, 9.3 percent MSU students experienced the above disorders compared with an overall rate of 9.5 percent across the entire survey. In addition to those statistics, almost 25 percent of MSU students report being unable to manage their stress level. The study shows an association between those unable to manage their stress level and the diagnosis of acute and chronic conditions.

What are the most common factors leading to unmanageable stress? The top three are: excessive credit card debt; death and/or serious physical illness of someone close to them; and excessive debt other than credit cards. Lack of health care coverage also ranked high—14.9 percent of Metropolitan State students reported they do not have health insurance. The survey displayed a correlation between students experiencing multiple stressors and engagement in “risky behavior” like smoking, gambling and drinking.

One of the most troubling statistics involved the number of students victimized by sexual assault or domestic violence. Nearly one in three (32.3 percent) of female students at Metropolitan State reported experience sexual assault sometime in their lifetime; 6.4 percent of male students reported the same. These numbers are drastically higher than the overall average of 26.5 percent for females and 5.6 percent for males.

The rates of domestic violence are even higher: 40.6 percent of females, or two in five, have experienced domestic violence in their lifetimes (compared with 33 percent overall) with males reporting 22.7 percent (overall: 18 percent).

Clearly, these experiences have a detrimental effect on grade point average. But the question remains: what does, or what can, the university do with this information? “I think there are some resources that students already have access to at the university that try to address issues that might be of concern to them or that might be impacting their academic success,” said Dr. Hampel-Kozar.

“These data also help us understand if some of what we are hearing about, and observing and noting in our individual interactions, reflects how things are in general for many of our students.”

Another goal of these reports is to help raise awareness of issues that otherwise go unnoticed or unspoken, simultaneously helping distressed students know they are not alone and can get help as well as lessen the prejudices some people hold against mental health issues and the perceived “weakness” in seeking help.

“Raising awareness of these issues is important, and I believe it will help bring together those concerned about how our students are functioning so that we can talk about how best to respond to what we are learning,” Dr. Hampel Kozar summed up, adding that it should include university administration, student services, student groups and faculty.

She also cited that the survey’s results may not need be taken so negatively.

“I do think, as concerning as some of these results are, that they also reflect the fact that so many of our students are resilient. I believe that a great number of our students are driven to work on their goals despite many challenges and difficult histories. These results may also speak to the fact that many of our students have identified and utilized methods of coping and healing that have facilitated their coming to (or coming back to) school.”

Student Counseling Services invites any student to contact them to help find ways to cope with stress and resolve the problems of everyday life with personal and/or group therapy sessions. Take their free, confidential mental health-screening inventory here http://archive.metrostate.edu/counsel/services.html. Visit them online or call 651-793-1558.