Kristen McClary Source 2

Step 1 

A) Mowbray, Carol T., et al. "Campus mental health services: recommendations for change." American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 76.2 (2006): 226. 

 

B) How do wellness programs offered by institutions of higher education impact a student’s mental health? 

 

C) I changed my topic because I thought it was too broad. To narrow it down I decided to talk about student’s mental health and not a student’s health in general. Also, I thought it would be good to speak about how the institutions of higher education try to help students with their mental health.  

Before: I decided to read Campus Mental health service: Recommendations for Change because I thought the title went along very well with the question I have. I also thought that before I get to know what the institutions offer, I need to know the flaws and to understand what institutions may need to do in order to better their services to help college students with mental health issues.  

During: While reading this source I realized that mental illness is becoming more and more relevant. Also, I realized a lot of these institutions almost feel that all these kids with mental health issues are almost a burden.  In addition, the lack of resources, money, and time seem to play a big factor in why these students aren’t getting the type of help they need. To increase the help many institutions have brought it upon themselves to have multiple people trained, on campus, to help these individuals with mental health issues.  

After: I feel as if most universities aren’t giving the help students need for their mental illness. Yes, these institutions have places were students can come for help, but they don’t get the time the need, the care they need, etc. Overall, I feel as if universities don’t have enough resources to truly help their students. Especially with the increase of mental illness over the years.  

 

Step 2 

This source talked about campuses mental health services. In the source it highlights the areas of where higher education institutions go wrong in helping their students get through mental illnesses to succeed in their school. They fail at helping students with their lack of resources, money, time, and right diagnosis. Overall, this source talks a lot about how institutions need to find ways to help more kids with the growing problem of different mental illnesses. To help these problems the source talks about doing things like getting more staff involved to help these students to become mentally healthy and succeed in the school setting.  

While reading this source I was surprised to hear that these institutions almost felt as if the student’s mental illnesses were almost like a “burden” to them. It made me think that schools may have these institutions, but are they there to help the students or are they just there for show? This really changed my outlook on the wellness programs. Originally I thought these wellness programs may really help to impact a student’s mental health, but if the programs don’t put their all into helping these students does it really impact them? 

Also, while reading this source I realized that it didn’t have much in common with my other source. Mainly because I decided to go less broad on my question to get more in depth with my exploratory paper. However, in both sources the topic had to do with the wellbeing of a student in an institution of higher education.  

Lastly, I feel as if this paper brought up a lot of new questions to ask. Questions along the lines of how these wellness programs should be structured. Also, what are they currently trying to do to help? I feel as if I need to research more of what these wellness programs do and to find statistics on if these programs actually seem to help students with their mental health. Overall, I feel as if I need to look at more sources with different viewpoints to truly understand what is going on in these wellness programs.