I could do with one of these room’s…….
Statistically, law students face more stress compared to other students during their time at school. This stress can lead to more severe mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety, and some even go so far as to attempt suicide.
According to the Dave Nee Foundation, 96 percent of law students admit to feeling stressed compared to 70 percent of medical students and 43 percent of graduate students.
The longer students stay in law school, the more likely they are to develop depression, according to the foundation. Only about 8-9 percent of law students have depression prior to matriculation. After one semester that number grows to 27 percent. After three years in law school, the number of students with depression grows to 40 percent.
Officials and students at the Texas Tech School of Law have decided to help alleviate these numbers by creating a room in the law school library dedicated to helping law students destress.
This room is for law student use only and can be reserved for 30-minute blocks and can be reserved by one person for an hour maximum per day.
The room includes comfortable chairs and aromatherapy. More materials to help destress will be added later.
The issue of law students’ mental health at Tech was brought to the administration’s attention during the 2016-2017 school year, when the Student Wellness Advisory Council was formed. During the 2017-2018 school year, members of SWAC began the conversation to have the space for law students who are feeling overwhelmed.
“Our main goal that we all decided that we all wanted to work towards was having counseling on campus,” Gunnison Matula, student director of the Student Wellness Advisory Council, said. “We were thinking of ‘what can we do, how can we solve this problem’ and so we went to the administration, to the Office of Student Life and were able to secure a room in the library.”
After they obtained the room at the end of the 2017-2018 school year, Matula said the new dean of student life, Sofia Chapman, helped the project take off for the 2018-2019 school year. With Chapman’s help, SWAC was able to begin the process of getting real counselors to help students with an issue that a large amount of law students face.
Spencer Young, president of the Student Bar Association, said he wants to normalize the negative stigma of law students feeling like they should not seek help. He said his mission was to help break this stigma within law students that surrounds mental health.
“I can really see the implementation of this really begin to help students really just be easy on themselves,” Young said. “It’s my main goal throughout all of this for these mental health rooms, these Mental Health Wednesday’s that we do, all of these various things to eventually become so normal that it really starts to fight away at that stigma.”
Students should pay more attention to their physical and mental well-being, start recognizing when they are not ok and seek out the resources available to them, Young said.
“Being aware of mental health and having those options available, students can begin to not only utilize the room but take in a larger picture and start realizing that it’s ok to feel bad sometimes,” Young said. “It’s perfectly normal to have your issues, it’s perfectly normal to be stressed.”
One of the major reasons law students have a hard time in school is due to the massive workload that comes with it, Matula said.
“I guess when I came to law school, I was kind of thinking ‘Oh, ok well yeah, college is busy. What’s the big deal?’” Matula said. “I guess the way classes are and you have so much on your plate at all times. You have a lot of reading, you basically have one test and that’s your grade for the entire semester, so it’s kind of scary all of a sudden when they’re like ‘Ok, you have a week to study. Hope you know what you’re talking about.’”
A lot of students begin to doubt their self-worth due to the pressure to perform well and ultimately falling short, Matula said.
“You go from having all of your self-worth attached to having good grades or having praise from family and friends,” Matula said “Then all of a sudden you go to school and you go ‘Wow, I’m in the bottom third of my class. I’m just not understanding this material and these other people are saying they do. Who am I, am I really that smart?’”
Another reason law school can be a lot on students is due to many of the students being older. Many students have families to take care of, which can add a lot to a person’s plate, Matula said.
The therapy room was specifically placed inside the law school’s library, Young said. This is so students can have space in a closer range to them and could help with any students that need immediate help.
“The library is right down the hall from all of the classrooms,” Young said. “It just goes to accessibility, feasibility and just making life efficient. We already have limited time as law students, and students in general for that matter, so just making these options readily available.”
