my bedroom. Anna, my older sis-
ter, is 18. She drives me to school
and seems unashamed of the white
hospital bracelet that clings to one
of her sticky, taped up wrists. No
one will tell me what is going on
but I find out anyway because the
blood is all over the place. She cut
too hard this time.
When I approach the woman
working at the CAPS front desk and
tell her I am there to interview Dr.
Lindsey Mortenson, she tells me to
have a seat. I imagine she is about to
schedule me an appointment with a
therapist.
You’re here as a reporter, I keep
repeating to myself, but I’m not
convincing anybody.
Heat begins to seep through my
skin and crawl into my soul like
a worm eats its way through an
apple. It’s so hot that I worry my
sweat will flood the room, lifting
all the chairs off the rug and mak-
ing them float down the hallway
like ghosts. The room is completely
windowless, and every surface is
covered with its own sickening
shade of purple. The walls are lilac,
the seats magenta, and the carpet
violet. None of the other students
seem to mind, though. Everyone is
well dressed and complacent. We
could be waiting to board a cruise.
Just as I am beginning to get
seasick sitting in purgatory, Dr.
Mortenson comes to my rescue.
Dr. Mortenson is a psychiatrist,
meaning she is licensed to pre-
scribe medication. Four floors up
from the Union basement’s Subway
restaurant, her office perpetually
smells like $5 Foot Longs.
Like the rest of CAPS, Morten-
son’s small workplace lacks a win-
dow. She gestures to a mirror on the
back wall.
“That’s my window,” she jokes,
sadly.
Impressive degrees line the
walls, including a medical degree
from Columbia University.
We make small talk for a second,
and then she asks me to have a seat
in one of two squishy gray chairs,
positioned across from one anoth-
er. Sitting, I can’t shake the feeling
that I am a patient and Mortenson
is about to prescribe me medica-
tion. We speak in soft, intimate
voices, and my questions sound
almost like guilty confessions.
When I ask, “What are the cri-
teria you use to prescribe medica-
tion?” I could be admitting, “I’m
having trouble sleeping.”
Usually,
patients
come
to
Mortenson because they’re already
considering the option of medica-
tion. By the time a patients are sit-
ting across from Mortenson in one
of those comfy gray chairs, many
have already tried other approach-
es, like going to talk therapy, eating
better and working out more.
“Usually by the time I see them
those changes have not been work-
ing and they are pretty symptom-
atic,” Mortenson says.
Mortenson’s job is to diagnose
the patient with a disorder and then
decide what medication would be
most appropriate for that particu-
lar patient.
I ask her whether this process is
difficult.
“Not really,” she says, shaking
her short blonde hair from side to
side.
The DSM-V — Diagnostic and
Statistical
Manual
for
Mental
Disorders — lists specific criteria
for every type of mental illness.
Mortenson makes her diagnosis
based on a checklist.
When I ask Mortenson if she
ever tries to talk her clients out of
taking medication, she says no. The
way she sees it, that is not her job.
Her job is to help people.
“If you have a medicine or proce-
dure to help somebody, you do it.”
she says, her blue eyes shining like
morphine stars. “What would that
mean to withhold treatment that
we know works for a lot of people?”
I try to see Mortenson as a vil-
lain for prescribing drugs so freely,
but I can’t. I think about my father.
When I call him with an ear infec-
tion or a headache or a sore throat,
he brings me medicine. He never
tells me that drugs are not the
answer or that I should try other
methods first. He just treats the ill-
ness.
In the 2013-2014 academic year,
CAPS had 20,000 mental health
care appointments. It’s no coinci-
dence that University therapy cen-
ters like CAPS see so much action.
College is a huge stress inducer.
“It’s a tough time in life,” Mari-
lyn Gilbert, the psychologist, had
told me. “There’s a lot of pressure to
succeed and be academically pres-
ent and to get a job and see what
your life situation is.”
For the most part, students
beginning college are also away
from their normal social support
system — friends, families, doc-
tors — for the first time. This loss
is extremely challenging for many
students and can act as a trig-
ger, especially for those who have
already been struggling with their
own mental health.
Additionally, there is much,
much higher substance use during
college years compared to other
periods of life. Binge use of alco-
hol, weed and other drugs is stan-
dard practice on college campuses.
It is easy for a student to turn to
substances when they are feeling
down. And it’s also extremely dan-
gerous.
“Alcohol is a depressant,” Gilbert
said. “It’s tempting because it takes
away the bad feelings, but it really
adds to the depression.”
Playing into all of these factors
are the raging hormones associ-
ated with one’s late teens and early
twenties.
“It’s a time when your body is
developing, and there are a lot of
hormonal issues that come into
play,” Gilbert said.
Young women have much higher
levels of sex hormones than young
men, causing their moods and feel-
ings to be much more affected by
hormonal changes. This is partly
why a much greater number of
young women struggle with mental
health disorders than men.
At the University, Maria drinks
more alcohol and smokes more
weed — the size of the bong in her
room attests to this fact — than she
did in high school. All of her manic
episodes have occurred while she
was extremely drunk, and these
episodes ultimately led to her diag-
nosis with bipolar disorder.
In contrast, Raina was affected
more by the lack of social ties she
experienced when she first came
to college. As a freshman, she was
going to Michigan State practi-
cally every weekend to visit her
high school boyfriend. She went to
CAPS initially due to loneliness.
“I was having trouble making
friends because I was gone all the
time,” she told me.
I think of my own sadness at the
start of college, how unbearable it
was. I can’t blame Raina for want-
ing medication when the feeling
remained strong a year later. For
me, the depression had ebbed over
time. At least a little bit.
It’s 2 a.m., and I’m lying in bed
trying to sleep, but I can’t stop wor-
rying about Maria. When I stopped
by her room after tennis practice,
she was clearly under the influence.
Whether it was from her hefty
stash of weed, her meds or some-
thing else, I can’t say, but she told
me the Klonopin was making her
all wobbly (“I just like, wobble. I
don’t fall”).
She was going through a hard
break-up, which was partially why
I visited her.
While we had been talking, she
stuck her right arm out toward me
with her palm facing up, like a child
sticks out her tongue after just fin-
ishing a lollipop. Slashed across her
wrist like ink were three bright red,
lateral slits.
Wednesday, January 21, 2015 // The Statement
8B
GLUE
From Page 5B
Read the rest of this article online
at MichiganDaily.com
LUNA ANNA ARCHEY/DAILY
LUNA ANNA ARCHEY/DAILY