Symptoms of Depression Among College Students - Paper Example

For instance, the introduction of Rehab sessions would allow those students who often want to keep their issues personal to confide with the college counselor or to other students who face the same challenges. These sessions would enable those students who have depression and substance abuse problems to interact together and discuss the best way to avoid these problems. Introduction of activity day of community service, on the other hand, would motivate more students to engage in outdoor activities. Nowadays there are a lot of indoor activities that are popular with college students such as video games and most students usually spent most of their free time in the house.  Therefore, outdoor activities would enable them to be more active instead of staying in the house alone which often increases the chances of suicidal thoughts especially when a student feels that his life is not going in the right direction (Edman, J. L., Lynch, W. C., & Yates, 2014). Outdoor activities would also lower the temptation of alcohol and substance abuse. House to house fellowship with the church is also another significant way of addressing depression in Campus students. This is because these fellowships bring spiritual nourishment and give hope to those people who are hopeless. Moreover, it encourages one to adopt healthy lifestyles which include abandoning drug and substance abuse.

Clinic check-up is the final process of this intervention method, but it is not necessary unless a student has serious mental health problems. It is an important step because one is diagnosed here and evaluated to determine the appropriate treatments to be implemented. My health promotion program will follow the service, social, and religious theory as described in chapter two of our lecture notes (Bilican, F. I., Yapici, A., & Kutlu, 2016). Since the program involves approximately five steps which is the introduction of Rehab sessions, activity day of community service, house too, house fellowship with the church, clinic check-up, and most importantly implementation of policies that would promote healthy living in colleges. The program is likely to last for approximately eight months. The first three months will be used to familiarize the students with the common aspects of the program. After that, the program is fully initiated. We are targeting a large audience. Therefore we will conduct an extensive awareness to attract a large pool of students. We have already written a couple of proposals to the government requesting for their monetary support. Therefore, if all goes well the government together with management of the college will finance the program. The main objective of the program is to promote healthy lifestyles among college students and most importantly control the issue of depression in colleges. We will also assess some of the factors that contribute to depression and suggest the appropriate measures that can be implemented to address those factors. To be honest, this health promotion program will target the causative agent of depression and the use of the drug and substance abuse among students. We will study the components that cause behavior modification and propose solutions to them.

References

Ashrafioun, L., Bonar, E., & Conner, K. R. (2016). Health attitudes and suicidal ideation among university students. Journal of American College Health, 64(3), 256-260.

Bilican, F. I., Yapici, A., & Kutlu, M. O. (2016). A Value Model for Depressive Symptoms and Hopelessness among University Students in Turkey. Educational Sciences: Theory and Practice, 16(4), 1397-1418.

Cuijpers, P., Cristea, I. A., Ebert, D. D., Koot, H. M., Auerbach, R. P., Bruffaerts, R., & Kessler, R. C. (2016). PSYCHOLOGICAL TREATMENT OF DEPRESSION IN COLLEGE STUDENTS: A METAANALYSIS. Depression and Anxiety, 33(5), 400-414. doi:10.1002/da.22461

Edman, J. L., Lynch, W. C., & Yates, A. (2014). The Impact of Exercise Performance Dissatisfaction and Physical Exercise on Symptoms of Depression Among College Students: A Gender Comparison. Journal of Psychology, 148(1), 23-35.

Ferizi, J. N., Mashhadi, A., Yazdi, S. A., & Noferesti, F. (2015). The effectiveness of short-term group interpersonal psychotherapy to symptoms of depression, emotional expressiveness, social skills and quality of life in depressed university students. Journal of Fundamentals Of Mental Health, 17(6), 318.

Furr, S. R., Westefeld, J. S., McConnell, G. N., & Jenkins, J. M. (2001). Suicide and depression among college students: A decade later. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 32(1), 97-100. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0735-7028.32.1.97