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

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