Graduation season - pay more attention to college students' mental health

According to data released by the Ministry of Education, the number of graduates from regular colleges and universities in China in 2024 is expected to reach 11.79 million, an increase of 210,000 year-on-year. This inevitably makes everyone pay special attention to the mental health of college students during this year's graduation season.

We are currently facing an economic slowdown, academic devaluation, and unprecedented internal competition. The anxiety of college students cannot be simply and crudely attributed to "Kong Yiji's long gown that he couldn't take off." From campus to society, they are faced with two worlds with very different rules of the game, which brings great uncertainty to the survival experience. At this age, the psychology and personality are still growing, and they are prone to psychological trauma after being frustrated in an uncertain environment.

Therefore, we have compiled 4 "psychological misunderstandings" that cause college students to worry too much, to help young people understand them correctly, master the correct and scientific coping methods, and get rid of them.

1. I still can’t find a job after graduation. My life is a failure!

This is a very typical cognitive distortion phenomenon called "generalizing", that is, making negative judgments about oneself based on one-sided and negative information, ignoring other positive information.

Everyone has his own pace, give yourself some time and space. Finding a job is not a test with standard answers, but more of a two-way, job-matching process. Temporary unemployment means that you have not found a job that suits you. If you are still in a state of confusion, it just means that you are re-understanding yourself and exploring your own direction, and every interview is an opportunity for self-exploration. Don't give up, believe that you will eventually find a job that suits your inner interests and goals.

2. If I don’t do my job well and no one understands me, I will never be happy again.

This is a common manifestation of "rumination", which refers to a person's repeated and passive thinking about the negative emotions of the event and its possible causes and consequences after experiencing a negative event. People who are caught in rumination often think: "Why does this always happen to me?" "Why do things always turn out this way?" "I can't do this job well."

Studies have found that ruminative thinking is often not helpful in solving problems. Instead, it will make people constantly think of negative events that have happened in the past, reduce their ability to understand and solve problems, and increase the risk of depression.

When facing rumination, we can try to focus on problem solving. We will always encounter problems of one kind or another at work. No one is perfect and will have negative emotions. When we encounter a problem, we should first think about how to solve it and whether there are any remedial measures, rather than dwelling on why it happened and whether others did it without making mistakes. In addition, we can also try to distract ourselves, such as reading, watching movies, relaxing, doing housework, painting, etc., to give ourselves a chance to pause, refuse internal consumption, and live in the present moment.

3. Feeling that there is something wrong with one’s mind and worrying that one may have some kind of mental illness.

We may be in a negative emotional state because of work dissatisfaction, which will increase our risk of suffering from mental disorders. However, "risk ≠ illness" is only considered a mental disorder when the intensity, duration or frequency of this negative state reaches the clinical diagnostic criteria, making it difficult for us to live a normal life.

If you feel that you have some unusual thoughts or habits, it does not necessarily mean that you have a mental illness. Each of us is a unique individual, and it is normal to be different in some aspects. Only when these abnormalities will obviously affect the normal life of ourselves or others, we need to seek help from professionals, such as going to the psychology department of a regular hospital for psychological diagnosis.

4. I was diagnosed with depression and was afraid that others would look down on me if they knew about it.

For a long time, people have a sense of shame and stigmatization for any mental illness, which makes people with mental illness stigmatize themselves and think that it is a shameful thing. But in fact, everyone is likely to suffer from a mental illness, which is related to a person's congenital genetics, acquired family environment, major negative events, coping methods and other factors.

After being diagnosed with depression, timely intervention and treatment are required. The onset of depression may be related to the disorder of three neurotransmitters, which play different regulatory roles in the human brain. For example: 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) plays a major role in improving depression and mood, norepinephrine (NE) improves the sensitivity of patients' thinking and activities, and dopamine (DA) promotes patients' cognition, pleasure and interest. If the regulatory functions of these neurotransmitter systems are disordered, people will have no reaction to emotions such as happiness, but will overreact to negative emotions, cognitive function will decline, and they will be trapped in the quagmire of negative emotions.

Social psychology believes that the most effective way to resolve stigma and discrimination is through information exchange and more personal contact. With the development of today's society and the spread of psychology, people have become more and more understanding and accepting of the existence of mental health problems. For people with depression, the most important thing is to accept themselves so that people around them can also accept themselves.

In fact, after reading it, we will find that these misunderstandings are not unique to college students. Each of us may encounter the problems mentioned above. Let us better understand ourselves, understand psychology, overcome these misunderstandings little by little, and live a more relaxed life.

(The pictures in this article are from the Internet)