Mental health is an aspect of life that everyone deals with, and NIC students are no different. Although mental health problems can be heavy, NIC has resources that can help students carry the weight.
Some people struggle with mental health more than others due to a variety of factors, the most common ones being: genetic predisposition, brain chemistry imbalances, childhood trauma, chronic stress, social isolation, and physical illnesses.
“I think the world that we live in with so much industrialism, we end up being so focused on productivity,” NIC student Ezra Tickemyer said, “and so to admit that there’s a weakness or a shortcoming, a lot of times you hide it out of fear, but I think it’s really important to be spoken out about it because there are resources that a lot of folks don’t feel like they’re either suffering enough to use or don’t feel safe enough to use them.”
Although it may not feel like it for some people, there is help out there. NIC has counselors on campus who are there to provide services and resources to support students in their mental health.
Deana Kalberg, NIC’s primary counselor, said that one of her roles is “teaching students stress reduction, anxiety and stress management, and skills to deal with panic, like with testing or giving presentations.”
Even so, some people are reluctant to go to counselors (particularly school counselors) for a number of reasons.
NIC student Kai Scott said that they would rather go to the NIC school counselor for academic stress rather than personal stress. “I feel like more personal stress is for outside therapists who actually deal with that on a daily basis,” Scott said.
Kalberg said, “I literally will help students with anything from getting on a better sleep schedule, processing emotions from a break up, dealing with chronic depression, trauma, or their stress going up.”
Another student, Ellie Sykes, said, “I feel like the school is kind of pressured to talk to you about getting your homework done, while managing your mental health, but if you go somewhere else, they’re actually gonna take your issues seriously.”
When asked what makes her different from a personal therapist, Kalberg said, “I don’t bill. How I’m trained, how I operate, how I function, the confidentiality or the privacy, how I would conduct myself in my private practice, it’s all the same… the only difference is I don’t bill.”
