<p>Well, I didn't read the article, but in response to some people who are saying not to mention depression unless it affects your grades...Most college apps I wrote were not all about grades or ecs. A lot of them just ask about "who you are". I guess some people use this as a vehicle just to show off grades and extra-curriculars, but that isn't necessarily the right thing to do. Depression has a huge affect on who people are, and thus is fair ground for any admissions essay. I didn't write about depression, but I did write about another internal struggle I had and it's influence on my outlook on life. An essay-reader was skeptical, but it didn't keep me out of several schools I applied to. </p>
<p>I would also argue that mentioning depression might not prove that critical either way. Just looking at this thread, some people worry it would give a disadvantage, others say it would give an applicant an advantage! </p>
<p>Be honest, folks. And don't hide something for fear of the stigma. That's how stigma gets created....</p>
<p>What we are talking about here is the fine line between symptoms of a disorder and a person's personality. Your personality is greatly attributed to your genetics...who's to say someone is lazy because of their own personal choice, or because of their genes? Should we give students whose parents have low IQs an advantage in admissions, because they are suffering from some kind of biological disadvantage? I'm studying neuroscience and biochemistry in hopes to go into psychopharmacology, and I think the major problem with the world today is that people love to blaim biology for their problems. We can't determine if someone is depressed biologically or psychologically. What if someone is psychologically depressed because of their our thought process, independant of hormones, neuroreceptors, etc.? Should they been seen as having a disorder in the same light as someone who's body can't produce endorphins/dopamine/serotonin in the right proportions? Psychological depression is often circular; a pesimistic outlook causes the person to be friends with people with a similar outlook, which reinforce the depressive thought process. That's not the same as a disorder, unless we want to start define all personality characteristics that we view as socially maladaptive as disorders, in which case we will soon enter a Brave New World.</p>
<p>When it boils down to it, I see this the same way as I see the ADD/ADHD problem. My normal doctor told me that if I wanted I could definitely see a psychiatrist and get a clinical diagnosis as ADHD based on the problems I've been having with doing work since I was young. But, is it a disorder or is just part of being me? I'm not going to get time extentions and modified testing in the real world, and I'm not going to change my personality just so I don't have to work as hard to study. The more we move towards correcting psychological flaws, the closer we get to defining everyone who isn't the norm as diseased. I don't want that. My inability to stand still has led me to do alot athletically, got me interested in music (I used to always drum on everything when I was little, now I play the drums), and has actually helped me academically (by overloading my courseload I still get things done because I constantly go back and forth between all my work when I get bored with what I'm doing). Whether I really have ADHD, I don't know. But my inability to keep my concentration on one thing and my constant inability to stand still has defined my life and my person, and I don't want to try to get any advantage over something that I see as part of me.</p>
<p>I have had clinical depression for the past 5 years, but didn't mention the word anywhere in my application although it has definitely impacted my schoolwork. I lost my health insurance 4 years ago, so I haven't had any medical help all this time. That meant I ended up getting 12 Ws, plus a year in which I completed no classes, and I've had to go part-time to community college for most of these 5 years because that was the only way I could manage good grades during this illness. I had some family circumstances 4 years ago that aggravated my depression, and I mentioned them briefly in a note, but in the personal statements didn't mention either the family problems or the depression at all. I concentrated on writing about my interest in my chosen major and accomplishments I had before the depression. I didn't mention depression because I was afraid of being stigmatized by the adcoms as an invalid more than as a potential Virginia Tech copycat. I find it pretty ridiculous that anyone would equate depressed person = future mass murderer, since most of us depressed people are too lethargic and wrapped up in our own heads to go out and commit violence.</p>
<p>Anyway, after all the years of struggling, I got into my top choice (UCLA) as a junior-level transfer, but I have no idea if my decision not to mention depression affected that at all.</p>
<p>Turns out that "depresson" is one of the medical diagnoses (even more so than diabetes and cardiac) that will exclude you from medical insurance.</p>
<p>Very true. I applied to several insurance companies after I aged out of California's state insurance for minors from low-income families, but my medical history including the depression made me ineligible for any form of private insurance, even catastrophic insurance. One of the reasons I have tried for so many years to transfer to a university is because I have a laundry list of medical problems that have gone untreated all this time, and my only option is university student health insurance....</p>
<p>First off, depression is brutal. It makes you feel like crap, mentally and physically. Do you think depressed people want to participate in activities or are motivated to do schoolwork?</p>
<p>I would know, I've been diagnosed (with anxiety too). I put it on my college application, along with my stories about my mother's illness not to get sympathy or pity but to prove I'm strong, I can handle it and it helped me become a better person.</p>
<p>It didn't change my admissions desicions...I can tell you that. But it doesn't hurt.</p>
<p>
[quote]
"But this article is about students using their mental illness as an excuse for poor grades. Why else would you mention a mental illness in an application? BTW, I think (in most cases) you have to be a moron to admit this on a college application. The purpose of creating an excuse would be to show that it was an isolated event (or period of time) and admitting to having a mental illness will often convey the opposite (ie a continual problem...why won't you perform similiarly in the future? etc)"
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It's not an excuse for poor grades. I have depression and I never recieved poor grades. But it helps them understand your circumstance.</p>
<p>Moron? Me? I think not. What helps is if you give information on hardships in a positive light and discuss how it helped you become stronger or better. </p>
<p>It's nice how you never had to go through what many people have, but don't be so quick to judge or point fingers. I think the friends of yours who might be secretly suicidal will appreciate it.</p>
<p>No matter how terrible depression is, if we beging to take mental disorders into consideration, we begin on the slippery slope of labeling everyone who is not genetically perfect as disadvantaged. Should unathletic kids be considered at a disadvantage because they weren't born with ability to play sports, thus limiting their ability to participate in extracurriculars? What about kids with limited social skills? Should we consider them at a disadvantage and make it acceptable if they have limited involvement in their school? College admissions look at students as a whole, and while its not the student's fault that they are biologically depressed, it's part of them regardless.</p>
<p>PURPLEUBE -</p>
<p>RE: Not being able to get health insurance because of a history of depression.</p>
<p>That is awful! What will you do when you are finished at a university and that health insurance is not longer available? </p>
<p>Even though I am am fiscally conservative, I just can't see how a society can function properly without universal health care.</p>
<p>MLEVINE07: “What we are talking about here is the fine line between symptoms of a disorder and a person's personality. Your personality is greatly attributed to your genetics...who's to say someone is lazy because of their own personal choice, or because of their genes? …I think the major problem with the world today is that people love to blaim biology for their problems….We can't determine if someone is depressed biologically or psychologically. What if someone is psychologically depressed because of their thought process, independant of hormones, neuroreceptors, etc.? Should they been seen as having a disorder in the same light as someone who's body can't produce endorphins/dopamine/serotonin in the right proportions? Psychological depression is often circular; a pesimistic outlook causes the person to be friends with people with a similar outlook, which reinforce the depressive thought process”</p>
<p>The malfunctioning of any organ, including the brain, is a matter of biology. In the matter of the brain, symptoms of a disorder, genetic predispositions, as well as thought processes, personal choices and outlook all have biological bases. </p>
<p>MLEVINE07: “That's not the same as a disorder, unless we want to start define all personality characteristics that we view as socially maladaptive as disorders, in which case we will soon enter a Brave New World.”</p>
<p>To some extent we already do define all socially maladaptive personality characteristics as disorders (as long as enough of the DSM-IV criteria are met).</p>
<p>MLEVINE07: “When it boils down to it, I see this the same way as I see the ADD/ADHD problem. My normal doctor told me that if I wanted I could definitely see a psychiatrist and get a clinical diagnosis as ADHD based on the problems I've been having with doing work since I was young. But, is it a disorder or is just part of being me? I'm not going to get time extentions and modified testing in the real world, and I'm not going to change my personality just so I don't have to work as hard to study”</p>
<p>I think the approach you describe is great as it is working for you. Yet ADHD is a very real disorder, and believe me there are many students nationwide who could not survive without those accommodations. ADHD is a disability just like a physical challenge.</p>
<p>MLEVINE07: Most people here are talking about mental illness as the reason that a student performed poorly temporarily, with the key word being "temporarily". As in, they had a dip in grades one year because of depression, but then they got diagnosed, got it under control, and did well, and that year is not reflective of what they can do. A more comparable situation would be an athlete who was out for one season with an injury but did well in the others.</p>
<p>The original point of the thread, though, was about colleges <em>discriminating</em> against students with mental illness (though, as has been pointed out, the article is misleading, as it lumps too many different things together). It was about the stigma against mental illness in society. Surely you would agree that a student who is doing well but has a mental illness should not be discriminated against. It's a rather different issue from the ones you raise.</p>
<p>Not all mental disorders have a biological basis. Some have a cognitive basis lying in behavioral learning and conditioning. It's important to remember that. We assume all to lie in biological functions because it is nearly impossible to test for biological problems (according to my Drugs and Human Behavior teacher, it would require a lobotomy). For an example of cognitive depression, if you place a rat in a maze with no end constantly, it will no longer attempt to find the end even if there is one present. This behavior is often equated with many behaviors seen in depressed patients. They are conditioned to be pessimistic, not neccesarily because of the genes.</p>
<p>DSM-IV isn't perfect. We dedicated a whole day to this in class, talking about how over-diagnosis is a product of the very general approach of the DSM.</p>
<p>I'm a Neuroscience/Biochemistry major, for reference.</p>
<p>spideygirl, my fiance attends another university, and as long as he can hang in his doctoral program, I hope to get insurance through him when we marry after I leave college.</p>
<p>My opinion is that being fiscally conservative isn't necessarily the antithesis to wanting a universal health care system. This country is grossly inefficient in how it spends its money on health care in comparison to other developed countries in the world who spend less while covering more people, e.g. Taiwan which spends 6% of GDP on health care vs USA which spends 16%. In the long run it may cost the US more to leave its 40 million people uninsured than to devise some system to cover them, since the lack of preventive care leads to them developing costly illnesses that they otherwise may have been able to avoid. (An example from my life: I should have been on insulin-controlling medication for these past several years because of a congenital metabolic disorder, but haven't because of my lack of insurance. Now I'm more at risk for developing diabetes, which is more expensive to treat than the original disorder.)</p>
<p>MLEVINE07:</p>
<p>But isn't true that behavior creates structural changes in the brain? What may have started out as cognitive then becomes biological. Whatever the brain does, it completes with structural tools.</p>
<p>Purpleube:</p>
<p>That is why I think that it is immoral to deny people health coverage, whether it is a good thing for the US financially or not.</p>