Lost in transition
Dealing with mental health becomes even more challenging during off-campus programs. BY NATALIE ESCOBAR
I cannot remember when I had my first anxiety attack in the Medill on the Hill newsroom, but I do remember exactly how it felt. Two hours into a morning of making phone calls and sending emails, my vision blurred, my chest throbbed and my limbs went numb. I made a beeline for the restroom, avoiding eye contact with everyone else in the office. Behind the safety of a stall door, I curled up into a ball and began to sob. Ten minutes later, I regained control of my breathing. I dried my eyes, washed my face and took a few deep breaths. I walked back into the newsroom, and nobody was the wiser. In the weeks before I went to Washington, D.C. for Medill on the Hill, a quarter-long politics reporting program, I worried about things like stocking up on knee-length skirts to wear around Capitol Hill, finalizing rent payments and catching up on the news. I had not thought much about my mental health. When students spend time away from the Evanston campus, Northwestern can connect them with mental health resources off-site. For international programs, administrative procedures such as health forms and pre-departure orientations facilitate these conversations. For domestic experiences such as internships or teaching residency programs, students can reach out to advisers or Counseling and Psychological Services if they have concerns. These systems, then, are largely predicated on students anticipating and pre-disclosing problems they might have. For some, however, mental health concerns do not necessarily fall under the neat umbrella of “pre-existing condition.” 40 | northbynorthwestern.com
Rather, the stresses of new environments – culture shock, professional expectations, loss of a campus support system – can pose unanticipated challenges that affect students’ day-to-day faculties to function. Depending on the program, communication about these challenges and how to deal with them can be limited at best and non-existent at worst.
Tight protocols & procedures A huge whiteboard hangs on the wall in the office of Julie Friend, the director of global health and safety at Northwestern. Covering it are the initials of the programs she is currently monitoring, from South Africa to Israel, representing the 76 students abroad this spring. Friend is responsible for hundreds more students in the fall, when about 400 leave campus. Worrying about Northwestern students abroad is her full-time job. She works closely with Northwestern’s Study Abroad Office and Office of International Program Development to identify and work with students who might need help. When applying to study abroad programs, students must fill out a form to disclose pre-existing health conditions, including mental health. Students can then meet with a CAPS counselor to talk about strategies and coordinate with the HTH Worldwide Student Health Insurance, a U.S.-based insurance company that provides coverage for students abroad, to find a therapist in their destination. For Northwestern-designed programs run through IPD, all students must attend pre- and post-departure orientations that,
in part, talk about how to seek treatment while away. Emily* sat through IPD-mandated orientation and did not check the box disclosing any health problems before she left to study abroad in Paris in fall 2015. She had never seen a therapist and did not think she would need to. Instead, she was preoccupied with thoughts of how thrilled she was to leave the country for the first time. But once the novelty wore off and loneliness replaced her initial excitement, she says she felt “pretty depressed” and isolated, especially when alone in her room at her host family’s house. “That was really disconcerting because I was like, I should be having the time of my life and I’m really not,” she says. As part of her program, however, she had been given an emergency contact list that included the names of two local English-speaking therapists. She went to one of them for a handful of sessions before deciding to stop. The two of them did not really click, she says, but she had other friends and IPD staff members there that were supportive enough to help her through her time abroad. “I think that in this particular situation, it wasn’t the fault of Northwestern staff or faculty,” she says. “That’s what having a mental health problem feels like. It’s a shitty feeling, and you feel like no one understands, even if they would or they would try.”
The limits of being proactive For students looking for resources before they leave campus, Mona Dugo,
