Mental health resources exist everywhere, but that doesn’t mean schools are anywhere close to where they should be. A student in crisis may not seek out help the way they would if, say, they had a sore throat. Some of that can be changed by better education of resources before the crisis. Sometimes it’s the faculty or admin who need some training. Also, destigmatizing mental health treatment goes a long way in getting students to utilitize existing resources. A few comments on this thread illustrate that very stigma issue. |
What do you suggest they do? |
Blame the victims because I can’t admit the school my kids attend is not perfect. |
Omg lol. Whatever makes you feel better about your miserable self. Where is that « gross » poster when you need them! |
Look at the culture they are creating—both by grade deflation and kids they are admitting , particularly in stem. |
A Princeton degree really means something because they don't water down academic standards like some of their peers. That's not a bad thing - young adults who've been coddled at their universities often struggle in professional settings. Princeton kids have been prepared, with rigorous course work and requirements for independent projects like a senior thesis. They are strong in STEM and more STEM-focused than decades ago, but that reflects the preferences of top students today. Look at the plans for graduating seniors at any top local high school and you are going to find more planning on major in STEM fields than comp lit and art history. Even so, Princeton is committing additional resources to humanities and it's a great place to study humanities because you get even more attention. |
Once again, tone deaf. Lady, there is a big mental health problem at Princeton. |
A healthy person can become unhealthy. Every high level student has experience with failure and losing competitions too. |
this is revolting. hope you tell yourself this when your stem kid is inevitably struggling. |
Disagree. The Princeton selection process purposely picks perfectionist kids. This leads to a horrific cycle, as perfectionism is the opposite of mentally healthy and resilient. It's a culture that is pervasive there. p.s. I know the parents of TWO of the kids who've passed in the last 3 years. |
A perfectionist isn’t perfect, it’s someone who strives to be, which actually means they’ve encountered coming short quite often, if not daily. The point being responded to was claiming athletes are uniquely experienced in dealing with losing. That may be sorta true at age 8, but at age 18 top students have at some point experienced losing meaningful academic competitions and awards or getting a disappointing grade or passed up for some position. Regrettably, I know parents who have lost kids too. Quite well, actually. One was an elite athlete, ok student, and socially very popular. He seemed very happy. It came out of nowhere. It can happen to anyone. It’s important not to generalize. It’s important to continue asking what we can do to make things better. I’m not trying to bash Princeton when I say they should do better. Every school should. The most unique thing about Princeton isn’t that their students are less resilient (a claim I strongly disagree with) or more stressed (they are stressed though not uniquely so), but that Princeton has the resources to do more. Schools with fewer resources can then learn from them. |
DP. Sounds like you are wishing difficulty on a student because you disagree with their parent. Hope not. Why do threads like this one so quickly lose sight of the goal to help students? |
| A lot of jumping to conclusions in this thread when we don't have much information yet. |
| As for the STEM talk, a Princeton article said he is an English major. |