The collective trauma of COVID-19 paired with heightened racial tension in the wake of the George Floyd protests has had a profound impact on Black students. Many counselors at Historically Black College and Universities (HBCUs) are noticing this effect in their students and the heavy toll that it is taking on their mental health.
“People are very much feeling disconnected from a lot of things. From classes, from their friends, from families. That could have a huge impact upon other areas of their lives,” said Vivian Barnette, counseling director at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.
Sometimes, however, it’s not as easy to detect what’s clearly a crisis in the community. In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the number of students seeking counseling at Southern University and A&M College is just about the same as pre-pandemic, after opening back to in-person sessions. But counseling director ValaRay Irvin explains that many of her counselors are now seeing more students presenting with increased anxiety, depression and lack of motivation.
Rates of depression and anxiety among Black students have been increasing at a staggering rate. A study from the National Institutes of Health found that approximately 34% of Black students reported feeling “so depressed in the last year it was difficult to function.” Black students attending HBCUs have also been dealing with the additional stress of bomb threats at their universities, and suddenly not having access to abortion services in the wake of Roe v. Wade — Black women are disproportionately affected by this. Eighty-six HBCUs are in states that have already restricted access to abortion, and many more are in the process of challenging reproductive rights, a factor that undoubtedly adds to the stress and anxiety Black students are already experiencing.
Read more at HuffPost.com.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.