O

n Nov. 4, University 
of Michigan students 
filled the Diag as Gov. 
Gretchen Whitmer stepped out 
of her campaign bus to rally 
the young crowd. With her was 
Pete Buttigieg, U.S. Secretary 
of Transportation. The next 
day, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., 
made his own stop in Ann 
Arbor, encouraging students to 
vote for the Democrats in the 
looming 2022 midterms.
Their mission: Get out the 
college student vote.
They succeeded. On Election 
Day, young people made up a 
much-larger-than-usual voting 
bloc. University of Michigan 
students waited for hours to 
cast their ballots at a campus 
polling place, giving Michigan 
Democrats a boost in what could 
have been close races. The Blue 
Blitz paid off, with Whitmer 
and her allies winning another 
term in each of the state’s four 
state-wide offices, this time 
with a Democratic Michigan 
House 
of 
Representatives 
and state Senate. All three 
progressive 
ballot 
measures 
were also approved.
The race was called and 
many Wolverines rejoiced — 
even though many of them are 
not from Michigan. Students 
from across the country who 
had registered to vote in Ann 
Arbor celebrated the triumph of 
their values. Michigan, a swing 
state, had swung left, and they 
had helped.
And when summer comes and 
they return home, they leave 
the people of Michigan to live 
with the results of the election. 
For this reason, these students 
need to be voting in their home 
states. Absentee ballots exist 
precisely for this reason. Even 
New Hampshire, the hardest 
state to vote in, only requires 
a simple form. The process is 
designed so that those abroad 
on 
Election 
Day, 
including 
students, can still vote in their 
own communities. 
Many people in line at the 
campus polling place, however, 
missed the deadline to fill out 
these forms. Procrastinating 
paperwork 
was 
not 
the 
only 
force 
driving 
out-of-
state students to register in 

Michigan; 
strategic 
voting 
also played a large role. Over a 
quarter of U-M undergraduate 
students come from deep-blue 
California, Illinois, New York 
or New Jersey. 
A Democratic vote in Chicago 
or Newark is a blue drop in a 
vast ocean. A Democratic vote 
in Michigan could change the 
color of the whole state.
President Joe Biden said 
democracy was on the ballot, 
and 
Michigan’s 
Republican 
gubernatorial candidate was 
an election denier. Roe v. Wade 
was overturned, and polling 
on Proposal 3, which would 
guarantee reproductive rights, 
looked uncertain. 
Mobilized by national leaders 
and consequential issues, many 
out-of-state students accurately 
concluded that a ballot in 
Michigan has a higher chance of 
swaying elections than a ballot 
in Illinois or California. So they 
cast one here. LSA freshman 
Ava Hammerman, who voted in 
Ann Arbor, explains, “I voted in 
Michigan because my vote has 
more of an impact here than in 
Maryland, which is much more 
blue. It is important to vote in a 
state that I can help swing.”
But what does this difference 
in voting power mean for 
lifelong 
Michiganders? 
Was 
our political system meant to 
contend with these issues of out 
of state votes? 
Michigan’s political diversity 
is a feature, not a flaw. An 
out-of-state vote in Michigan 
does not answer a defect, 
it dilutes the influence of 
permanent residents. Abortion, 
immigration, 
gun 
control 
and education may be less 
contentious issues in liberal 
cities and states, but not in 
Michigan. In future elections, 
it should not be so easy for non-
Michiganders to influence the 
issues Michiganders feel so 
passionately about. 
Federalism, 
the 
bedrock 
of the United States, is based 
on local people making local 
decisions. State governments 
are meant to represent the 
interests of their constituents, 
not temporary lodgers. Though 
out of state students live here 
for four years, and any state-
level policies will impact them, 
they certainly do not have a 
comprable insight to lifelong 
Michiganders. 

A student living only in a 
dorm, paying few taxes and 
counting down the days until 
they can return to New York 
has little of the knowledge 
necessary to cast an informed 
vote in Michigan, and they 
are far less affected by the 
results. Most important issues 
on the ballot are not as flashy 
as 
reproductive 
rights 
or 
the governor. Further down 
the ticket, local judges, city 
council, the mayor and state 
representatives 
are 
equally 
important.
These are serious contests 
with significant consequences 
for people in the community. 
But they lack the heavyweight 
titles and gravitas to excite out-
of-staters driven by national 
issues. Even within Michigan, 
the idea of a Detroiter voting for 
the Ann Arbor School Board is 
absurd, let alone another person 
with 
permanent 
residence 
hundreds of miles away doing 
so. 
Many 
students 
feel 
like 
they are wasting their ballot 
voting in their deep blue home 
state, but they are wrong. The 
small races that really define 
a community all demand their 
voice. America is a country 
built 
on 
communities, 
and 
the nationalization of politics 
has had very negative impacts 
for them. Detroit, Ann Arbor, 
Chicago and New York all have 
their own neighborhoods with 
their own problems that require 
a highly localized response. 
The diversity that makes 
America special manifests itself 
in school boards and city halls. 
These seats of local government 
should be emblematic of the 
people living there.
The big issues still matter. 
Election denial must stop and 
women must have the right 
to choose, but it is up to local 
people to make it happen. 
And they usually do a good 
job 
— 
Trump’s 
handpicked 
conspiracy theorists lost at the 
polls. Only nine states prohibit 
abortion with no exceptions and 
Michigan is not one of them. So, 
to all the out-of-staters who 
voted in Ann Arbor, your own 
community needs your vote 
more. Michigan does a good job 
on its own.
Jack Brady is an Opinion 
Columnist and can be reached at 
jackbra@umich.edu.

Wednesday, December 7, 2022 — 9
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

To Medicate or not to medicate? 
College students must decide

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Out-of-state students help swing 
the vote

JACK BRADY
Opinion Columnist

T

his past week, I went 
to the University of 
Michigan’s 
student 
health services to get routine 
blood work and lab tests done. 
After 
checking 
in 
for 
my 
appointment, the receptionist 
handed me a small clipboard 
with a questionnaire attached. 
“It’s just protocol,” she assured 
me. “We ask all college students 
to fill it out.” The survey asked 
me to consider my feelings and 
behaviors over the past two 
weeks, prompting me to rate 
the extent to which I had little 
interest or pleasure in doing 
things or felt tired and had little 
energy — and, unsurprisingly 
for a college student in the 
middle of exams, I ranked each 
of these categories pretty high. 
When I was finally admitted 
into 
the 
doctor’s 
office, 
I 
handed over my questionnaire, 
and waited as she scanned 
over my responses. After a 
couple 
minutes, 
she 
began 
slowly 
nodding 
her 
head 
back and forth while I braced 
myself 
for 
the 
follow-up 
question that I already knew 
was coming: “Have you ever 
considered taking anti-anxiety 
medication?”
It 
is 
precisely 
this 
line 
of 
questioning 
that 
has 
contributed to the doubling 
of 
anti-anxiety 
and 
antidepressant prescription use 
among college students, with 
one in four college students 
reporting having taken some 
form of psychiatric medication 
within the past year. Although 
pharmacological treatments for 
mental illness have provided 
life-changing results for many 
people, they do not come without 
repercussions. Specifically, the 
appallingly low thresholds for 
prescribing psychiatric drugs 
have 
engendered 
harmful 
trends of overprescription and 
misdiagnosis. 
The form that I was asked 
to complete by the receptionist 
in 
the 
doctor’s 
office, 
formally known as a PHQ-9 
questionnaire, is a major culprit 
in the progression of this 
epidemic of overmedication. 
Not only does the form’s reliance 
on self-reporting of symptoms 
open up a strong potential for 
error and response bias, but 
in a recent study researchers 
at 
McGill 
and 
Stanford 
found that the questionnaire 
“substantially 
overestimates 
depression prevalence.” 
When 
compared 
with 
structured clinical screenings 
for depression, the PHQ-9 was 
shown to falsely overestimate 
depression 
rates 
by 
more 
than 50%. This is particularly 
concerning, considering that 
almost all population estimates 

of depression prevalence are 
based exclusively on cursory 
screening tools such as the 
PHQ-9. Thus, a vicious cycle 
ensues: depression and anxiety 
rates are inflated by inaccurate 
and 
unreliable 
clinical 
practices, and production of 
psychiatric drugs is bolstered to 
meet false quotas of perceived 
necessity. 
Consequently, such trends 
of 
overdiagnosis, 
paired 
with worsening shortages of 
psychiatric professionals, have 
promoted the false perception 
of psychiatric medication as 
a complete and total solution. 
The 
National 
Institute 
of 
Mental Health identified the 
growing threat of this mindset, 
affirming 
that 
“prescription 
drugs are not a cure for anxiety, 
but rather only one part of 
treatment.”
In 
fact, 
multiple 
studies 
have found that the continued 
use of antidepressants may be 
harmful in a way that many 
would not expect. Identified 
as 
“tardive 
dysphoria,” 
experts have established that 
extended use of these drugs 
substantially 
increases 
the 
risk that an individual will 
experience chronic depression 
in the long term. This is 
normally accompanied by an 
overall loss of antidepressant 
efficacy, rendering the patient’s 
corrective options limited and 
fraught.
A study conducted at Yale 
found 
that 
usage 
of 
SSRI 
(selective serotonin reuptake 
inhibitor) 
antidepressants 
more than doubled the risk 
that a depressed individual 
would 
develop 
bipolar 
disorder. This emerging patient 
demographic has been revealed 
as chronically overmedicated 
and undertreated, highlighting 
a growing need for critical 
reevaluations of societal views 
of mental illnesses and their 
plausible remedies. 

The solution to this problem 
lies in the prioritization of 
both holistic and cognitive 
therapies for mental illness, 
rather than strictly chemical 
ones. These approaches have 
tentatively 
been 
shown 
to 
be equally or more effective 
than 
psychiatric 
drugs 
in 
treating depression and anxiety 
disorders, with reduced risks of 
relapse after ending treatment. 
Another recent study coming 
out of Georgetown University 
Medical 
Center 
suggests 
that 
consistently 
practicing 
mindfulness 
and 
meditation 
had the same success rate in 
reducing symptoms of stress 
and anxiety as psychiatric 
medication did. Such findings 
are imperative for efforts to 
reduce medication reliance, as 
the results could increase the 
likelihood of insurers to cover 
costs for holistic treatments 
and therapies, which currently 
can cost up to $500 for an 
8-week session.
These circumstances serve 
as a sobering reminder that 
matters of health are highly 
personal and unique to each 
individual. 
Mental 
health 
issues 
in 
particular 
are 
extremely complex, and often 
unable to be fully ameliorated 
through blanket solutions such 
as medication. Health care 
systems have come to rely too 
heavily on prescriptions rather 
than preventative action, and 
this trend threatens to pose 
serious harm to the American 
public 
if 
not 
corrected. 
Ultimately, although effective 
for 
some 
individuals, 
no 
medication 
comes 
without 
a 
set 
of 
side 
effects 
and 
repercussions. Accordingly, it 
is important to always do your 
research, with considerations 
of whether these potential risks 
will be offset by the benefits. 
Tate Moyer is an Opinion 
Columnist & can be reached at 
moyert@umich.edu.

Design by Samantha Sweig

Opinion

Design by Evelyne Lee

Double Decker December

Cartoon by Anya Singh

TATE MOYER
Opinion Columnist

