A couple of years ago, Daymian Mejia, a senior at Lesley University in Cambridge, began experiencing thoughts of self-harm and suicidal ideation. The son of Dominican immigrants, the 23-year-old from Jamaica Plain is the first in his family to go to college. At Lesley, he studies digital film. He also has a mood swing disorder, which he said "becomes like a tint over everything."
“Every single emotion, everything that you do, just feels like it's somewhat distorted,” Mejia said.
A young Latino attending a predominantly white school, Mejia said he had felt isolated on campus even before the pandemic.
“I could count every single person of color in the film program,” he said. “You walk into a room and culturally, you know that there's no type of connection. I grew up very Americanized, but regardless, even just looking at this skin, there's a disconnect.”
National data show Mejia, who is brown-skinned, is far from alone in feeling disconnected on campus. A national survey conducted this fall found 90 percent of students are experiencing stress or anxiety as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, and one in four say their depression has significantly increased since March. Students from historically underrepresented groups — Black, Latino and Native American students — were more likely to report they’re stressed and depressed on campus and that they lack a sense of belonging, according to the survey of 2,000 college and high school students for Active Minds, a nonprofit that promotes mental health awareness among students.
That disturbing trend is constant among both undergrads and graduate students, said Tabbye Chavous, director of the National Center for Institutional Diversity at the University of Michigan.
“Latinx, Middle Eastern and Arab American students may be particularly likely to report anti-immigrant treatment, regardless of their actual immigrant status,” she said during a recent forum event hosted by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Chavous' research finds that since March, Asian and Asian-American students are reporting increased xenophobia made worse by the pandemic and anti-immigrant political rhetoric. And Black students are also under significant stress.
“Anti-Blackness may uniquely impact Black students, showing up in their experiences of being treated with fear and suspicion, policing and monitoring, interactions based on anti-intellectual stereotypes,” she said.
GBH’s Basic Black: Mental Health & College Students
Nationally, the pandemic is driving down college enrollment. As a result, many predominantly white schools are relying more on high-performing students of color who may need more support, financially and otherwise.
Carlota Ocampo, provost at Trinity Washington University in D.C., said colleges can’t just enroll these students — they should provide mental health supports to help them succeed.
“We must recognize that American society is constructed in such a way that people of color have experiences that are different and that may be traumatizing,” she said. “That is not a problem of the person of color. That's a problem of society.”
During a pandemic and one of the most bitter elections in American history, Ocampo said college students of color have been facing unprecedented levels of stress and anxiety.
“It's like we're living through the Spanish flu, the Great Depression, the riots of ‘68, all while Andrew Jackson is president,” she said. “They're kind of like bothering everybody, so you can imagine all the more how these may be impacting people whose overall relationship to society just is fragile.”
Ocampo is a national advisor to The Steve Fund, a nonprofit that advocates for mental health resources for underrepresented students. It recently made a series of recommendations to colleges, like revising the curriculum and widening the career pipeline.
Chavous said it’s also important to engage and promote professors who support students’ mental health. “When faculty are actually supported, incentivized and recognized for doing this work as important work, they’re more likely to do it,” she said.
On Campus Radio: Stressed And Depressed On Campus
At Lesley, Mejia is on track to graduate this spring. He's trying to stay hopeful as he prepares to launch his career during a recession. But he said his pandemic depression is colliding with his seasonal depression.
“You also have election stress and, even post-election, there’s still going to be so much,” he said before Nov. 3.
Taking all of his classes online, Mejia can’t see a therapist or even a professor face-to-face.
“I haven’t even attempted to reach out because I'm not going to want to have a Zoom call to talk out my feelings with somebody,” he said. “Usually, what I need is to be in-person with somebody, and that's literally eliminated.”
For now, Mejia is coping the best way he knows how: by writing poetry and taking photographs. When things get really bad, he sends a text to a suicide prevention hotline.
GBH News' Diane Adame contributed to this report.
If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) or use the Crisis Text Line by texting “Home” to 741741. More resources are available at SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.
