The Campus Crisis

The severity of mental health problems on college campuses has been rising dramatically since 1988—one year into the Prozac era. But it has also been a time of other major shifts, in the culture at large and the character of colleges.

Everyone, for example, has had to adapt to incessant technological change. And there's the economy, stupid: job outsourcing is so real a pressure that students hyperventilate at the mere thought of having to commit to a major lest their chosen field evaporate before their diplomas are dry. Also, diversity makes special demands on students' social skills just when no one is at home to teach them to the children anymore.

Small wonder, then, that young ones are showing signs of psychological distress. But are college students today fundamentally different from college students of other times? Experts point to many reasons why today's kids are besieging campus-counseling centers.