MENTAL HEATH AND GROWING SECULARISM

On college campuses, Mental health issues are proliferating according to Dr. Gene Beresin:

·       Dr. Gene Beresin, a psychiatrist and Executive Director of The Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds at Massachusetts General Hospital, says 50% to 60% of college students have a psychiatric disorder.

·       “What I’m including in that is the use of substances, anxiety, depression, problems with relationships, break-ups, academic problems, learning disabilities, attentional problems,” says Dr. Beresin. “If you add them all up 50% doesn’t seem that high.”

·       Dr. Beresin says the suicide rate in college in astronomical. “A college student kills himself every day,” he says. read:students-suicide/

Can we blame stress for this proliferation? Probably not! College campuses have always been a source of stress and competition – nothing new about that.

However, without consulting other studies, there seems to be new or burgeoning factors:

1.    MORAL RELATIVISM: When there is no objective right or wrong, then our feelings necessary fill the gap. Consequently, they assume a greater role.

2.    SEXUAL FREEDOM: The coed no longer has an adequate reason to resist sexual advances. She doesn’t want to be a prude. However, uncommitted sex, rather than liberating, tends towards enslaving to awakened emotional needs.

3.    CHRISTIANITY: As bad as we might feel about ourselves, when we rely upon Jesus, we can endure. However, Christianity has been systematically demeaned at secular college campuses. In place of God, secular counseling tends to turn the counselee inward, suggesting that the answer lies within ourselves. This simply places another burden upon the sufferer. Instead, we need something – Jesus Christ - to counterbalance both self and feelings.