ps Antidepressants can also be wonderful tools, and other types of psych. meds save and salvage lives, so I am a supporter of careful medication when needed for serious clinical diagnoses, whether medical or psychiatric…but benzos like Xanax are very habit forming and withdrawal is vicious
Thoughts on college students and anxiety and choosing colleges:
My DD has anxiety. She got on meds in HS and did well…but going to college ups the anxiety level.
Instead of just new teachers like you might have senior year, you have:
new bedroom, new roommate, new professors, new food, new friends.
So that ups the ante.
Then, if they want to ask for help, there is the anxiety about going to the counseling center or the tutoring center or professors office hours.
Things to consider:
MEDS
Consider talking to a psychiatrist before she leaves for college. If she is put on medication, then
who actually picks up meds from the drugstore? You or her? She will need to do that (or arrange for mail order). My DD’s college had an arrangement with a local pharmacy to deliver meds…but it didn’t always work ( or she didn’t always request refills on time.) Come up with a back up plan so she could get them her self if necessary (e.g., take a taxi to the pharmacy and here is a taxi number).
I would start having her be in charge of re-ordering meds now so she can get used to it.
How often does she need to see a psychiatrist for med renewals? Ours was like every 3 months but my DD was an hour from home so we could get her if necessary. Would she need one near school?
ORIENTATION:
What kind of orientation does the colleges have?
I steered my DD toward one with a week long orientation…most activities were with kids on your floor so you would get to know them…they also had dedicated Community Assistants who also were useful as advisers/sounding boards at first. A place with one day orientation in the summer and then move in and get started may not be the best thing for anxious kids.
OVERSIGHT:
My DD wanted help with applications and all the signing up for housing etc. so I had her school login. She was also cool with me continuing to have is and I could check on her grades at first to make sure all was well.
Would your DD be cool with that?
SUPPORT:
Look into the Counseling Center… what services do they provide?
During orientation or admitted students day have her visit the center.
Do the same with Tutoring…mine knew she needed tutoring but was too anxious to go to the center until someone went with her.
ACCOMMODATIONS
Does your daughter need any accommodations? (e.g. extra time on tests)
Maybe talk to your DD’s current counselor and disability office about what documentation would be needed.
SELF-AWARENESS
How self-aware is your DD about her anxiety/panic attacks/depression?
Does she know when it is getting worse?
Does she know to ask for help? Or get a friend to help her ask for help?
COMMUNICATION
Does she communicate with you well? Will she tell you if things are not going good?
Will she accept your input? Will she be okay with you checking often to see how it is going?
LOCATION
How far away is the school? Will travelling home on her own cause stress if it is far away?
Can you pick her up if she needs a break?
My DD picked a school an hour away…far enough away to feel like she is “away” but close enough that we can get her if necessary.
TUITION INSURANCE
Look into getting tuition insurance if your DD cannot make it through the semester for medical reasons
ROOMMATES
Probably she will be happier if she knows who she is rooming with before she gets there.
Tell her that her expectation is that the roommate is a reasonable person and if they are good friends that exceeds expectations. Make sure she knows to talk to her RA about issues early on if she has issues.
COMPETITION:
My DD was the type of kid who likes to be around other competent people…like when she was in 5th grade basketball and she could have played down with the little kids (and be a star) or up with the older kids she chose to be up with the older kids.
We picked a school where she was at around the 75% of GPA/SAT… Not the best, but toward the top.
Malcolm Gladwell says it is best to be a big fish in a small pond, rather than the opposite.
Can your DD handle competing against the best of the best?
COMPLETION
It is better that she feels comfortable and does well in a “safety” school rather than get stressed out and drop out of a “reach” school. It is where you actually graduate from that counts.
INDEPENDENCE
Up until now, mom and dad have been prodding her somewhat to do homework, etc.
How well does she do this on her own?
During senior year of HS, I’d check in with our D’s therapist ever so often, and ask, “Are we sending her off to college in the fall or keeping her home?”
In the end, our D mostly wanted to go, and the therapist was supportive. The therapist did say to me, that in her experience, it can be really hard to predict what will happen. That is, she’s seen kids go off on really wobbly legs and spread their wings and soar. Then other kids, who you guess are going to be fine, crash and burn.
There are so many variables to each situation, I hesitate make any broad generalizations. Unless you have a crystal ball, there is no guarantee of outcome if you send her or keep her home.
I will offer that we were initially resistant to having her see a psychiatrist, but we were glad we went. The therapist had a good referral for us.
Good luck!
My daughter just graduated from Wellesley. She has lived with depression and anxiety since she was 15. ( Mental illness runs in our family.)
These are the strategies that worked for her:
She had a therapist and psychiatrist off campus her entire time there, which I highly recommend for any college student dealing with these mood disorders. She used a Zipcar to get to her appts.
She also told her friends about her problems, just so they’d know what was going on, not to make them responsible for her.
When she was having a rough time, she let the dean and her profs know. There is a ton of support at Wellesley. Everybody wants you to thrive there! I can’t stress this enough.
The social life is excellent. It’s based on relationship and connection, rather than outside entertainment, but there is plenty of the latter, and there are regular buses that run to Cambridge for parties, etc.
Your D is already plugged into the system for her depression. You can utilize all of our advice but a session with her therapist about this is so much more useful than strangers’ words. This person knows her and should be able to sort out typical entering college concerns and underlying problems that will determine if she should go to college this fall.
Look at post #23! Do a private message with this mom- solid experiences instead of our speculation. btw- I doubt your D is too immature- all college students seem to be and a lot changes in the next months. Good luck to you and her- success is possible (#23).
My daughter is also a Wellesley grad.
Does your daughter like to be intellectually engaged? Does she enjoy academics? – I am guessing if she applied to Wellesley and was accepted, this is the case.
Wellesley provides an exceptionally good opportunity for intellectual engagement. Wellesley is intense because the students are very involved with their academic work.
This is a good thing, if you have no interest in attending a school where Greek life or football games or whatever else is an important part of the school culture.
If she loves discussing a good book or working with a strong lab partner or is looking forward to pursuing some other academic interest – Wellesley will provide her with wonderful opportunities to do these things.
My D is also a Wellesley grad. In HS she didn’t have a lot of friends; was not social. More busy with her activities and definitely an introvert. At Wellesley she met “her people” and made tons of friends. She’s still very close with her Wellesley friends (at a wedding this weekend). Wellesley was an environment that allowed her to blossom socially.
I think getting and following the advice of your daughter’s therapist might be the best way to go – especially from the point of view of her self-esteem, if the eventual decision is that she should not go to Wellesley this fall.
“I was supposed to go to college this fall but I chickened out” feels very different than “I was advised to wait a year before starting college so that I could get a health problem under better control.”
I don’t always feel therapists are the best source. I guess it depends!
A chronic issue is unlikely to go away completely, and sometimes the idea that a time out can heal is an illusion. Again it depends. It would seem that there is still time to address the obstacles to attendance.
As a parent who has been in this situation more than once, including sending a kid off who has occasionally life-threatening health issues- I would also say that we parents need to look at our own reluctance and fears and how they might be validating and therefore contributing to anxieties.
Not saying that is relevant here but for me, with one it was, and with one it wasn’t.
Mental Health comes first. Period. College will be there, and there is no race to degree completion. What college looks like for your child may not be the same path, same timeline, and that is okay.
Take some time to search through this forum and read about students who did not put their mental health first. Lots of parents pouring out their hearts, regretting the decision to allow their child to enter college, only to see them collapse and fail. Use your Mom-sense, trust your gut, and don’t worry about living outside the box or doing things differently.
If your child is not in easy driving range of home, it will be hard for you to monitor progress. No way to tell if medication is being taken regularly, if classes are being attended, or even if they are eating food every day. Sleeping in and not leaving their dorm is an easy pattern to fall into, surviving on junk food from a vending machine.
You are getting all kinds of advice here, but you must listen to your inner gut, your child, your child’s therapist, and other close family relatives who can give opinions based on knowledge of your child’s current situation.
If you choose to send your child to college this fall, buy Tuition Insurance, prepare your child as best you can, and require signing of all forms to have complete access to grades, communication with medical professionals, and other college issues so you can monitor as best you can from afar.
Gap years for mental health can heal or sidetrack. Attending can end up with a thriving kid or a kid who crashes and goes home. My family has experienced a wide range of these possibilities. Main message is that no matter what happens, or what you decide, it can work out. There really are no disasters as long as our kids stay alive, and that is really the bottom line.
ps with tuition refund insurance, be aware that you have to provide documentation that it is a medical withdrawal and make sure depression and/or anxiety are covered…as they should be.
I agree with @compmom
Although our D experiences stress & anxiety associated with her academics, doing well in school is a big part of her self-worth, for better or worse.
In addition, since about middle school, time off from school has been hard for her. She tends to hole up in her room, sleep too much, not eat well, and we sense her drifting off-track. She is very private, doesn’t share much with us at all, so we have to go by what we observe on the outside, and we’ve concluded that she seems less happy & less productive with lots of time at home.
These were some of the things we had to weigh when deciding whether to green light her going off to college.
Every situation is different.
So much good advice here. My experience mirrors that of @mom23travelers so I tend to support the idea of being cautious – a gap year, deferment, etc.
In the long term, there are usually few down sides to postponing college for a year, but many possible risks when sending a highly ambivalent kiddo.
To be blunt, as long as suicidality is not involved, things can be alright if the kid does go and then leaves or fails. All kinds of scenarios can work. Believe me, I speak from experience on all sides. Even when they leave and work at the local sub shop, things have a way of gathering and moving forward 
I do know one young man who deferred and did a wilderness program in Wyoming and other places. He went to college in good shape. His sister was fraught with anxiety and went to college and more than thrived, despite her senior year/summer angst. So even in one family it can vary.
Tough decisions, main message: In the end it will be alright!
Nobody out here in cyberspace knows the best choice for your child. Several good long conversations with her therapist, some with parents involved, is the best first step to making this difficult choice. It does seem to me that putting her through another entire college search would be tough but again, only you and your family know best.
If she does end up going to college, I feel strongly that a very strong, regularly scheduled support system MUST be in place before classes start. Do not leave her on campus until every detail is arranged. This includes regular therapy (maybe even twice a week at the start of the semester), a course load that may be on the “light” side to facilitate the transition, and the signing of all privacy waivers necessary to permit the college to communicate directly with the parent both about her health and her class performance. This is a HUGE hurdle but they DO have the mechanisms in place to grant these waivers. You may need to go directly to several different offices with the student to put this in place but it is worth the effort.
I also suggest registering with the disability services office. This will lay the groundwork for any sort of “special” consideration that she may need down the road, like an extension on a big assignment if a major anxiety attack strikes, or even missing a class here or there without penalty if she feels like she just can’t get out of bed some days. Also, many colleges of this type have mechanisms in place to “watch” certain freshmen to monitor their progress. I’d ask for your daughter to be placed on this list from the beginning of the semester, so that her attendance and class performance are both monitored. Missing class is often the first sign that trouble is brewing.
And then…the obvious stuff that you surely are already doing…like reassuring her that you love her and will still love her no matter where she is in the fall and regardless of what should happen if she goes to college and must come home mid-semester. This is an extraordinarily difficult transition and more difficult for those students with mental health concerns, but the good news is that MANY MANY students with these issues do go to college. Sometimes the path is not linear but many (I’d say most but I’m not an expert) will thrive, graduate, and use that college experience and diploma to pave the way to a happy, productive future.
Best of luck to you. There is no single best choice.
Hi!
I recently graduated from Wellesley, and I hope I can be of some help. First, I want to say that it sounds like your family has a lot of factors to weigh, and while I think that my experience can offer some insight into the concerns you and your daughter are having I don’t want to assume that my Wellesley experience can be perfectly applied to your situation.
That being said, before coming to Wellesley I was extremely apprehensive and my main concerns related to the same things your daughter is nervous about- not having a “typical college experience” in terms of social life and being overwhelmed academically. In retrospect, I absolutely loved Wellesley and found the friendships I made to be the strongest, most supportive relationships in my life. While I loved my time at Wellesley, I can say that for almost all first year students the first semester is often pretty difficult. I think in a lot of ways this is most applicable for students who are really looking for the kind of sterotypical social experience that can be found at larger, co-ed colleges because big schools facilitate this social atmosphere more easily through big on campus parties/football games/etc. Additionally, because Wellesley students (like your daughter) are so high achieving a lot of students can often feel intimidated by their peers when they arrive on campus and sometimes forget how amazingly smart and talented they are too. When your daughter gets to Wellesley, she will be given a first year mentor who will check in with her for her entire first semester and who will discuss things like homesickness, anxiety, and adjustment openly with a her and a group of 12 or so students. I became very close with my first year mentor and found it extremely comforting to have an upperclasswoman who had also once been an apprehensive first year like me.
Although your daughter’s nerves about leaving for college and whether Wellesley is the right school for her are normal, I think it would still be a good idea to talk to a therapist before leaving to ensure that she is ready to go to college considering she is experiencing depression and anxiety. Wellesley has extensive counseling services that 1/4 of the students make use of, but I think talking to someone with experience and making a plan of action may bring both of you peace of mind and enable your daughter to feel comfortable using on-campus counseling when she gets to Wellesley if she needs it.
In terms of taking a gap year, I know many people who took time off before coming to Wellesley or during their time at Wellesley, some of whom were experiencing depression, and I from what I’ve heard it benefitted them a lot and helped them to rest after being a student for so many years and refocus their interests.
I really sympathize for you and your daughter, and I hope that this was somewhat helpful. Although I was once one of the least enthusiastic students at orientation and I didn’t really feel like I totally found my groove until the end of my first year, I can honestly say that going to Wellesley was the best decision I’ve ever made. Again, my experience and the experiences of my friends at Wellesley are not one size fits all, and I think it could be really beneficial to talk to a counselor before making any major decisions.
Best of luck!
One other thing. If she is already registered with disabilities office and seeing a counselor, then if she does crash and burn, so to speak, or fail classes, or whatever, she can get a medical withdrawal (leave of absence but withdrawal from classes) and at most schools, that wipes the record clean so her transcript can be protected. Also, if that happens and she has tuition refund insurance, you lose no money.
I know these things are not priorities, at all, right now, but they are added safety nets in case she decides to go.
Does anyone know of tuition insurance that does not require documented hospitalization for mental health issues?
Remind her Wellesley would have not have offered her admission if they thought she could not do the work. Those admissions folks are good at their job, your D has to be a smart cookie to have been accepted there. I wish her good luck.
I think it is unfortunate that a diagnosis of Anxiety has the same name as the absolutely normal feeling many people have when facing new challenges. Anxiety, the feeling and Anxiety the disease are different from one another even though they share the same name. Anxiety, the feeling, is perfectly normal and my guess is that the vast vast majority of college students experience it when leaving home for the first time.
Anxiety, the disease, is not normal and can be crippling. It won’t go away just by powering through the transition and doing the things she knows she should be doing. Extreme cases can cause panic attacks which can feel like heart attacks. Anxiety, the disease, can be quite debilitating.
OP-if your child has Anxiety, the disease, not anxiety, the feeling you should encourage her to work with a competent psychologist to develop coping tools as well as a competent psychiatrist to prescribe appropriate medication so that your daughter can have her disease under control before she leaves for school. If it can’t be done by the time she is supposed to leave perhaps a deferral is in order. Your daughter needs to be whole before she can worry about her education. She is young and in the long run it doesn’t matter if she gets her degree at 22 or 23. Simply hoping she is ok will not make her ok.
If she has anxiety, the feeling you should let her know how normal it is to be stressed out over the transition. You should help her pick out things she will love for her new dorm room. You should encourage her to join social media groups for her school and to meet people in your area who are going to her school. You should talk with her and remind her that Wellesley had many qualified people apply and they would not have accepted her if they thought she could not do the work.
Only you really know your child. Good luck to your family.