Jo Kawabata, Vance Lockmiller
ASA2
Section 2
Valverde
Mental Health Issues
In recent years, more and more attention has been directed towards mental health and the well-being of students. Especially among Asian American students, many pressures from all different directions, affect the mentality of an individual causing them to suffer through serious mental conditions. While some articles relate the the accruing numbers of mental conditions in young adults to the increasingly developing technologies surround our everyday life, there are other causes such as pressures from the public related to the “model minority” status and expectations from family members that are specific to Asian American students. Mental conditions tend to be overlooked as they usually are not obvious and some may even consider the side-effects of such conditions as “normal” to students; however, it is imperative that light is shone onto the topic to ensure well-being of all students to prevent unnecessary distress and tragic ends to student’s lives. The following articles discuss causes of such mental distress and ways to combat them.
The first article, “Is Wi-Fi in Schools Safe?” by Brian Spero, discusses a proposed scientific reasoning behind how some technologies used in the school environment can actually be harmful to students. School curriculums and courses have become more and more reliant on technology to the point where the same education could not be possible without the help of some technologies. However, the article discusses the detrimental effects of such electronic devices, delving into the effects of electromagnetic fields, or EMFs. EMFs are released by many devices commonly used on school campuses and they can cause a motley of problems to our mental health. The article explains how our body works with a system vulnerable to EMFs and exposure to the amount that is readily in the air in school environments can cause problems including but not limited to depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, visual impairments, fatigue, etc. Such problems clearly pose a challenge to all students who are susceptible to EMFs as they are the ones who most need to stay away from all problems EMF causes in order to learn in a good environment. Government agencies however refuse to admit the malicious effects of radiation from electronic devices, labeling the commonly used technologies on campus as safe. As unfortunate it is to see students suffering through emotional and mental health, the current world relies on the technology and we should make an effort to fix the problems in other ways than to try to eliminate or limit the amount of technology available to the educational environment.
Although the preceding article discussed a potential cause of mental illness, the following article, “On Some College Campuses, A Focus On Asian American Mental Health” by the New America Media, discusses the mental illness Asian Americans specifically face while in college. The article goes on to list several undiscussed potential causes of mental distresses. An example of this is being labelled the “model minority.” Students feel pressured from the general public being Asian as they are expected to do well in school and become successful in the future. Other causes the article discusses includes the expectation from family members and other barriers specific to Asian American students. All of these lead to pressure on students which cause students to feel stressed and potentially distracted from their school assignments. I, being Asian American, also have felt some of these factors that may have contributed some stress over the years. Especially dealing with my parents, who expect a lot out of me, always makes me rip hair out of my head when they seem to constantly be overlooking and pointing out flaws, causes much stress to me, making the cited problems very relatable.. I understand how part of the “model minority” also expects us to not acknowledge the emotional or mental struggles we may be facing, I agree with the article in that even Asian American students need to seek out for help if they need it. Being an Asian American student certainly has its unique difficulties but as a community, we must recognize these difficulties and address solutions for them in order to help every student succeed.
In “Pathologizing Everyday Life,” the author Anais Nin started off by introducing a very interesting idea that there are two concepts, mental disorder and “mental distress.” Mental disorder is a condition that negatively affects your mind while “mental distress” are everyday predicaments that have been classified into mental disorders. The reason why this is significant is because with the addition of “mental distresses” into mental disorders, the amount of mental disorders have increased drastically. We are essentially are combining patients who have disorders and patients with stress issues into the same category. This creates a problem because when doctors go to analyze their patients, they will come across patients who do not need the same medical attention if they are just in distress as someone who will need a psychiatrist's full attention. With this week’s topic in mind, this article in particular brings up a very interesting spin on the topic of mental health. There are actual patients who need medical help while others are just experiencing every day stresses. Until there is a different way to classify these two apart or more research is done on how to treat “mental distress,” not much can change for doctors or for people like us.
The next article, “The Americanization of Mental Illness” by Ethan Watters discusses this idea that as a country, we had been spreading our knowledge of mental illness around the world. This does two things. First, it changes the treatment process for mentally ill process. Secondly this means other countries are slowly adopting our idea of what it means to be mentally ill. This is very scary after reading the previous article and writing about it. America is so behind on technology and research yet other countries are trusting our opinions. We could be feeding them false information that one day could harm the human race. Over the past several decades, doctors and professionals have been trying to educate the public on mental illnesses. One the last ideas brought up by Watters is that rarely are mental health facts actual real scientific facts. The western culture uses their theory and idea of the human body and decides to make an educated guess about their observations. Again with the previous reading in mind as well as the paragraph down below, we can see how our ideas as a western country have to some degree affect the other nations below. It’s imperative that America takes our research seriously as many people could use our research to help them in their issues of mental health.
The article “Wi-fi in Schools” by Cindy Russel was similar to the first article as it goes over the negative effects wi-fi can have on humans and how other countries are taking the matter in a more serious manner. The first main point brought up by Russel was the FCC and how its standards are based on heat generated by wi-fi devices. But according to data presented in the article, wi-fi has a significant impact on living organism as it can cause neurological harm, cause infertility issues, damage brain cells, increase stress levels and break apart the DNA structure. In another experiment Russel brought up, scientist were curious as to how wi-fi would affect the magnetic compass birds have. A bird’s magnetic compass is a term used to describe how birds remember where they need to migrate each season. The experiments had results showing wi-fi affected these magnetic compass. In the last part of the article, Russel compares several countries’ wi-fi regulations to show readers how drastic the American standards are to others. For example America allows 1000 micro-watts in schools while China allows only 10 micro-watts and Belgium only allows 2.4! Other countries take further precautions to ban wi-fi in school, in nursing homes and have wi-fi routers clearly labeled. I feel as if the FCC is ignoring this issue on purpose since telling people that the wi-fi they use everyday could potentially be harming them. America clearly lacks the research other countries have in comparison and one day all this wi-fi could severely harm our future generations.
The vast amount of concerns related to mental health clearly exist starting with mental health in relation to wi-fi, to Asian American mental health, all the way to discussing the difference between mental disorder and mental distress. Even though all these topics emphasize something truly unique, together they make one strong argument. The need to treat, prevent, and help people with mental health issues has increased dramatically. In a rough estimate, one if four people will have a mental health issue sometime in their life and 450 million people already have mental health issues. That is an extremely large number, but it does not have to be. If people like you and I go out and help assist people with mental health conditions, we can make sure they see the person they need and most importantly, let them know they are not alone. You need to be a doctor to realize someone like you may need help, you just have to be willing to care about the people around you.
Works Cited
Kam, K. (2013, September 13). On Some College Campuses, A Focus On Asian American Mental
Health. New America Media. Retrieved May 4, 2017.
Mental disorders affect one in four people. (n.d.). Retrieved May 07, 2017, from
http://www.who.int/whr/2001/media_centre/press_release/en/
Nin, A. (2016). Pathologizing Everyday Life . In Depathologizing Psychopatholog (pp. 7-12).
Springer International Publishing Switzerland.
Russel, C. (2015, March & april). Wi-fi in Schools. The Bulletin. Retrieved May 4, 2017.
Spero, B. (2017, April 25). Is Wi-fi in Schools Safe? Boston Parents Paper. Retrieved May 4, 2017.
Watters, E. (2010, January 10). The Americanization of Mental Illness. The New York Times.
Retrieved May 4, 2017.
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