Rod and Karen discuss Black Friday still going on, holiday cards, Kanye stuff, Nick Cannon stuff, self-service checkout is nasty, rogue wave hits cruise ship, a couple deliver packages discarded by Fed Ex driver, old woman arrested for not paying trash bill, DOJ intervening in Jackson, MS water system, Putin took a spill, Yale sued for discrimination over treatment of mental health, Black Capitalism, man arrested during shop with a cop, mean steals 4 trailers, Trump man arrested for defecating on neighbor’s lawn and sword ratchetness.
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I think the people who continue to give Kanye a platform to spew his bullshit is even more complicit than Kanye at this point because they know he’s unwell and just using him for clicks. Unfortunately Kanye will continue this downward spiral because he has a persecution complex and I believe in his mind that the more people turn against him the more he’s right so he’s going to keep it up.
So another perspective on this Yale and mental health situation. People enter college with mental health issues they knew about and hid from the college because of the image they need to portray to get into college. It happens all the time because mental illness is still stigmatized. Likewise, people age 18 to 24 are more likely to develop mental health issues while in college. Please look it up. College ain’t easy and life don’t stop life-ing. BUT colleges ain’t mental health treatment facilities. Colleges are businesses. And as much as people want to call some of them bastions of liberal thinking or places that care about students blah blah blah, they are businesses. Their business is education not treating mental health. And their is a privilege associated with being able to access one regardless of you SES. I’ve had access to mental health service in college that I never could have accessed before college. Paying for therapy now as a working adult can be challenging. So I (me) don’t understand how people can expect these businesses of education to be more than they are.
Also, where is the full scope of humanity here? If a person enters a college and tries to kill and doesn’t succeed how are they ready to go back to class? How are they ready to just stroll back to a dorm room and spend the time necessary to work through an attempted suicide? Who’s going to watch and monitor this person 24/7 to make sure they don’t make another attempt? How do you stay at a college and not do college because of your mental health? What about the mental health of people that don’t know that person personally but who are affected by their attempt to kill themselves? What about the people who themselves are survivors of suicide? What about the people, most often other students that may have found that person that tried to kill themselves and called 911/emergency services to save their life? What about their mental health? What if you’re that person’s roommate, how do you just return to the room with them or without them? I ask all these questions because I’ve thought about this with college going kids.
What’s crazy to me, some colleges can’t disclose personal information to me even as a person paying tuition without my kid’s expressed permission because of the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act FERPA.
When I learn about a kid from my kid or email from their school or on the news that a kid killed themselves. I’m saddened first. Then I wonder who knew, I mean really knew about this persons mental health challenges? I bet money ever time on the parents/guardian and some close friends WAAAY before I will believe the college knew a thing. College kids be so afraid to tell a friend to go get professional help or say this is too much for me to handle because of the way it feels and seems intrinsically to them. They want to be supportive with no professional background in therapy or mental health. Yes, colleges can be in the know about a kids mental health but only if the person is using college services or people are worried about their safety. But I think in general colleges find out shit when it’s too late related to mental illness. And this is because I believe anybody can develop mental health issues at any time. People don’t normally go advertising they are thinking about killings themselves. Just like no one wakes up and says, yep my mental illness is just about ready.
I say all that and ask all these questions because there are no reasonable answers or solutions. Mental illness is real and very difficult to manage me/or address. For me I accept financial resources outside myself and especially my own are limited for my kids wellbeing sometimes, college is an educational place with limits, but I want my kids college to have equitable access to all the college things for their wellbeing. Life be life-ing.
Been thinking what I could add as a tenured assistant professor in a Japanese university. I’ve worked in three of the top four universities in the Kinki region, and they all have a limited amount of mental health support.
Unfortunately, it is not well advertised and the administration is not allowed to tell the teaching staff about students with known mental health issues because of “privacy” issues.
I partially understand (mental health stigma in Japan is no joke), but it’s kinda hard to offer support when being kept in the dark. The one exception was when I was teaching special classes for hikikomori (acute social withdrawal) students. I knew their situation and I could help them when they showed up.
TLDR – dealing with mental health in academic institutions is difficult.
About the Yale lawsuit: when I was doing a PhD in Economics at Cornell, another Ivy League school, I started to experience my first symptoms of bipolar disorder. Cornell is an extremely stressful school, in an isolated town that gets snow 6 months a year, and is well known for its student suicides. While I was there we had so many suicides one school year that we had prison style fencing and 24 hour police patrols on every bridge on campus. It was not uncommon to have to take a detour home because somebody jumped into the gorge during the 50 minutes you were in class. No exaggeration.
This took a toll on my mental health but the medical leave policies were so restrictive that I couldn’t take time away from school without losing all my funding and possibly not being able to return. This was also pre-Obamacare so mental health coverage was not well covered under our student health insurance. So not only were the mental health services on campus trash, I couldn’t really leave to get help elsewhere.
Ultimately I decided to drop out for good once a guy in my PhD program committed suicide. The suicides hit too close to home.
It’s sad to see that not much has changed in 10+ years. I do think the universities have a responsibility to provide generous mental health resources and policies. ESPECIALLY the schools with as much money as these Ivies. If these schools are gonna reap the social capital of their rigorous reputations they need to invest in mental health resources and policies to help the students succeed. I think it’s in Yale’s best interest to settle and invest heavily in resources and policy overhaul. It’ll be good PR and it helps everyone. More successful graduates = more alumni donations. So even if they do it selfishly it’ll help the students
We pay a trash bill because we are the owners of our home. That sounds pretty bragging but I don’t know how else to tell it. It’s a semi attached house ( to a second house) to sound less like a rich person. A renter doesn’t pay for the trash directly but indirectly for utilities . Pretty sure this is also how it goes in the US? If not, sorry America.