Back at the beginning of the quarter when I was starting to brainstorm what I should choose as a topic for my research paper, I wanted to choose a topic that meant something to me. Rather than just choosing something random to focus on for 3 months, I wanted to choose something that I could actually relate to and would be devoted to for the whole quarter. As most of you know, I ultimately chose to focus my research on mental health of college students however, you probably do not know why.
During my sophomore and junior years of high school, I struggled with depression. I was in a very dark place in my life and I was trying to hide and avoid the fact that I was suffering from a mental illness. After two long years of trying to fight it, with help from my family and friends, I was finally able to overcome this dark time in my life.
However, a few months after starting college this year, I felt the depression creeping back up on me. Once again, I tried to avoid it and pretend like I was fine, but the truth was, I needed help more than I ever did before. After about 6 months of the depression getting worse and worse, I finally got the courage to receive professional help. While I am still struggling, I am getting better each day and to my surprise, this research paper actually helped me to get through it.
My own personal experience inspired me to choose this topic for my research. It was so important to me to choose this because I knew that I wasn’t the only college student who has struggled with mental health issues. I really wanted to research more about this and find out why this is happening to not only myself, but so many other college students throughout the world. I wanted to find out how to stop this issue from affecting more students. The most important thing I wanted to accomplish was to educate myself through this research so that I could better understand the issue and use my knowledge to help others in advocating mental health on college campuses.
I know that through this research I am not going to make the problem go away, but I hope that it will give me the chance to educate, in the very least, one person on how important this issue is. Even if I only get through to a few people, I hope to make a difference in at least one student’s life so that they can prevent themselves from ever having to struggle with a mental health illness.
