Half of Harvard students think they're mentally ill

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 Ivy Leaguers be crazy -- or think they are, reports Ira Stoll in the Washington Free-Beacon.

Forty-seven percent of Harvard seniors said they’d experienced mental illness while in college and another 13 percent were unsure, according to a Harvard Crimson survey, while 60 percent of Princeton's seniors told the Princetonian's survey they'd received mental health counseling or therapy during college.

By contrast, 23 percent of U.S. adults have mental conditions of different levels of severity, estimates the National Institute of Mental Health. Far fewer receive therapy.

A 2022 federal lawsuit charged Yale with failing to accommodate "students with mental health disabilities," Stoll writes. A recent Yale Daily News opinion piece, Yalies for mental health, complains that "many students still wait unacceptably long to see a therapist."

It's not clear why so many very successful students think they need mental-health services, Stoll writes. He wonders if it's linked to students' political views.

Are today’s students really more depressed, anxious, or panicked than previous generations, or are they and the grownups around them simply more likely to diagnose and label their maladies as mental illness?

Liberals report much worse mental health than conservatives, writes Lauren Van De Hey, a political scientist at Utah State, in Just a Little Melancholic, Maybe a Little Blue: Mental Health as an Emerging Political Identity, published in April.

While 16 percent of adults calling themselves "very conservative" or "conservative" say they've had mental illness at any time, that rises to 24 percent for "moderates" 31 percent for "liberals" and 39 percent for those identifying as "very liberal."

It's not clear whether liberals are more likely to be mentally ill or more likely to embrace that label, Van De Hey writes. It's possible that "Republicans (conservatives) do not consider anxiety and depression to be mental illnesses at the same rate as Democrats (liberals) . . . because of a personal responsibility ethos or other shared Republican predispositions," she speculates.

In other words, the conservatives may not be saner -- just more deeply in denial.

The Crimson survey found 65.6 percent of Harvard students identifying as either "progressive" or "very progressive."

Forty percent of Berkeley students claim a disability, writes Garry Tan. By far the greatest number claimed a psychological/emotional disability, with attention-deficit disorder in second place.