Depression is a serious issue for college students. The National College Health Assessment indicates more than half of surveyed college students felt hopeless in the last 12 months. Two-thirds of those students felt very sad, and nearly 40 percent felt so depressed it was difficult to function.
While it’s ultimately up to your child to fight depression and get treatment, you can model and encourage adaptive behaviors. With a strong set of almost automatic, healthy responses, your child can prevent depression from taking hold or make it easier to manage if it ever does.
Encouraging and engaging in the following behaviors will protect against depression and promote healthy living:
Establish healthy routines. Depression makes people believe the world is beyond their control. Especially in difficult times, relatively automatic healthy routines will keep your kid on course and give her a sense of control. Ensuring that she adheres to things like a morning routine, a bedtime routine and a healthy diet — no matter what — will make it easier to recover from almost anything.
[See: 11 Simple, Proven Ways to Optimize Your Mental Health.]
Be persistent. Depression can make it seem like there is no hope in trying, which can make it hard to combat the mood disorder, and that’s precisely the type of vicious cycle you want your child to avoid. It’s imperative that your kid keep going, especially when times are tough. This might mean devoting more effort to studying or getting to class, and it could also mean keeping up with exercising or even going to the movies or playing video games. Especially when your child begins to lose interest in things he usually finds pleasurable, he must keep going. This will make it less likely he will become or stay depressed.
Maintain social connectedness. Perhaps the most powerful protection against depression is having strong relationships. There is ample evidence that depression’s negative effects — including an increased risk of suicide — are magnified by social withdrawal. Social support buffers your child against stress and gives him a sense of purpose and meaning. People with strong social ties tend to engage in healthier behaviors than those who have few or poor-quality relationships. Social people lead longer, happier lives.
Stick to your values. While college provides a relatively safe environment in which to experiment with new behaviors, your kid should keep in mind that she arrived on campus with a set of core beliefs that helped her get there in the first place. As she is challenged to try new things, she must consider how her actions fit with the kind of life she wishes to live. Keeping depression at bay is about remaining open to new experiences while adhering to well-tested, healthy values.
[Read: How Parents Can Identify Mental Health Problems in Their College Kids.]
Be flexible. At its core, depression is a lack of flexibility. When a person is depressed, he is seeing things in a rigid and negative way. For him, the world will be clearly divided into good and bad. He will see more horrible things than desirable things and will discount positive events as flukes in a life that is mostly awful. He will overestimate the probability of something terrible happening and ignore the possibility that things might get better. Colleges are focused on improving cognitive flexibility. Set your child up for success by encouraging him to think creatively to solve problems he faces, rather than providing all the answers.
Get help. We often have a tendency to think that going it alone and not admitting weakness is the best course of action, ignoring that the strongest thing we can do in many cases is to ask for help. Make sure your kid knows that you’ve needed help from time to time and that you reached out for it (even if you find it difficult to admit that). Listen to your child, and let her know that you are there to help if she needs it, while also acknowledging the limits of your expertise. Make sure she has contact information for campus mental health services and other resources in case she should need it; and make sure you have that contact information as well, as a backup if she asks for it. Respect her boundaries by allowing her to take initiative if she needs to reach out for help. In cases where your child doesn’t seek the help she needs, be direct and open about your concerns.
[See: How College Students Can Avoid Getting Sick.]
A strong defense against depression requires time and attention before problems arise. Don’t wait to help your kid take steps that could prevent depression or ensure they’re more equipped to deal with it.
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Depression-Proofing Your College Kid originally appeared on usnews.com
