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Ella Brownstein

Professor Stalbird

English 1201

17 March 2019

Annotated Bibliography

My essay will attempt to answer why college students experience anxiety and

depression and what can be done to decrease anxiety and depression amongst college

students. I want to know why so many college students have anxiety and depression and I want

to know if there is any treatments or even preventions of anxiety and depression at college. Are

students provided with help when they are experiencing these feelings? I would like to find

some of the causes and see if there is a way to get rid of what causes anxiety and depression in

college.

Brown, Joel. “Anxiety: The Most Common Mental Health Diagnosis in College Students

| BU Today | Boston University.” Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) | Human

Resources, BU Research, 02 October 2016

Joel Brown, a writer at BU Today, wrote a published article discussing how anxiety has

become the leading mental health issue for college students today. This academic article was

published on BU Today. It is from a three part series written in 2015 about mental health and has

been updated since then. Brown explains how the amount of students in college with anxiety and

depression has increased since 2008. He claims that anxiety and depression can be treated with

therapy, lifestyle changes, and medication when indicated.

The author’s purpose of writing this article was to address how much anxiety and

depression has increased in college students over the years. Brown also writes about what is

normal for college students to feel and what is not normal to feel. He wants to make clear that
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every student feels stressed from time to time but once it begins to interfere with your ability to

function while at school then you need to find help. Brown is writing for BU students mainly but

he is also generalizing to all college students. He mentions that all students at BU get a free

screening to determine whether they are experiencing depression or anxiety and what treatment

process they can go through to help them.

Knowing that this source is reliable and the author is credible, I will use this source in my

research essay to discuss treatments for students who have anxiety and depression. I will also

use this article to show that depression and anxiety has increased amongst college students

over the past couple of years. I will use Brown’s statistics to support my claims.

Brownstein, Joseph. Personal Interview. 28 February 2019.

Joseph Brownstein is my older brother. He is 19 years old and is a freshman at

Heidelberg University. Brownstein went into college with the mindset that he was going to enjoy

playing football for the university and attending a smaller university. Once he got there he

realized he did not want to be there and it was not where he felt happy. Joseph went through

some hard times because he tried to force himself to enjoy being there but everytime he only

ended up feeling depressed. He constantly tried to make everyone around him happy and not

think about himself. This caused him a lot of anxiety as well. Once he finally decided to talk to

his family about what he was going through he got help and began to plan his journey to get

better.

Joseph Brownstein is credible and reliable because he experienced anxiety and

depression in college and is still currently in the process of getting over his depression and

anxiety. Brownstein completely changed his way of living and his mindset. Now that he is a
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more positive person, listens to his inner voice and makes healthy decisions he is overcoming his

depression and anxiety.

I will use this personal interview in my essay to give a first hand experience of someone

who has experienced anxiety and depression in college. I will discuss how he has began to

overcome it and what lifestyle changes he had to make in order to get better. This will be

incredibly useful in my research paper because I know he is reliable, he is my brother, and it will

be very easy to discuss because I got the information straight from him.

Dredze, Joshua Menachem. “Mindfulness: Facet Relationships with Anxiety and

Depression in College Students.” ProQuest LLC, ProQuest LLC, Eric, Sinclair Library, 1

Jan. 2017.

Joshua Dredze is a writer who focuses on mental health and gets his writings published

on Eric. His main purpose of this essay is to inform college students who are going through

depression and/or anxiety about mindfulness as a coping technique. Dredze discusses studies that

show how mindfulness is related to non-judgement and non-reactivity with depression and

anxiety.

The audience is for college students and anyone interested in learning about the study that

happened. I believe this is one of the less informative articles that I have looked at but it alos

gives one great study to examine. I can use this article to give an example of different ways

anxiety and depression can be caused and how mindfulness comes into play. I will also use this

in my research paper to introduce mindfulness as a topic.

Heitler, Susan “The Disturbing Truth About Anxiety and Depression in College.”

Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 20 March 2016.

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Susan Heitler, a clinical psychologists who graduated from Harvard, wrote this article as

a response to another article that was about the things that all college students should know

before entering college. Heitler has a college student discuss his feelings going into college and

the reality of what happened once he got there. This student experienced anxiety and depression

and he realized the cause of his feelings were because he was not living for himself. He had been

trying to live up to the expectations that college was meant to be this amazing time where he

would always work hard and play hard. The way he cured his anxiety and depression was to just

listen to himself and follow his own plans and thoughts.

Heitler expands on this students thought by discussing what students can do if they are

feeling like they are going through anxiety and depression. Her main point and purpose of this

article is to express to college students that they need to listen to their inner voice. Heitler went

on to write a book on mental health.

This article is reliable because it comes from an author who has a PhD from Harvard and

writes on mental health. I will use this article when discussing students who have anxiety and

depression and what they feel. I will also answer how to cure your anxiety and depression in

college. I can use this article to expand on the fact that many college students experience anxiety

and depression and there are ways to get rid of it completely.

Kerrigan, Alisha “Coping With Depression At University | Careers Blog | Inspiring

Interns.” Careers Blog | Internship News | Inspiring Interns, 21 June 2018.

Alisha Kerrigan is a graduate from the University of New York where she earned her

bachelor’s degree and majored in psychology. Kerrigan discusses different coping methods if

you are experiencing anxiety and depression in college. She also uses statistics that show the
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amount of students who do have anxiety and depression in college. This is a blog so it can sound

opinionated at times but her research backs up her claims. The three main topics the author

discusses are; seeking help, avoiding alcohol, and increasing your vitamin D.

Kerrigan intends her readers to be college students who may be struggling with anxiety

and depression. Her intention is to help them realize they are not alone and help them find a way

to get rid of their anxiety and depression. It is written casually, as if she is talking to you and

wants you to feel comfortable. This article is less strong than some of the other articles I have

read but it still gives useful information.

I will use this source for my research paper to answer the question I have about how to

students can deal with their anxiety and depression and how they can get rid of it. I was also

discuss how these cures actually help the students. I can use the statistics she provides to back up

my claim.

Scott, Stuart. AFSP, afsp.org/our-work/education/real-college-students-mental-health/.

2019

Stuart Scott composes this video to discuss how college students feel once they actually

get to college. The video includes college students who speak about how they thought college

was going to be compared to how it actually was once they got there and began to experience it.

Scott is the vice president and chief information officer at J.B. Hunt. His purpose of this video is

to make suicide awareness education more prevalent on campuses around the country.

The video has six college students speak about their anxiety and depression that they

experience while in college. Some things discussed were how they constantly felt tire, sometimes

they felt like they didn’t even want to live anymore, and some even got close to committing
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suicide. Some colleges do not realize how serious anxiety and depression is and this video

explains and hopefully impacts people to take anxiety and depress way more seriously.

This video is reliable because it consists of students who had anxiety and depression. I

will use this video like I will use my personal interview with my brother. I can get information

straight from the people he experienced this disease first handedly. I can answer my question of

why students feel this way and what their thoughts are.

Tugend, Alina. “Colleges Get Proactive in Addressing Depression on Campus.” The New

York Times, The New York Times, 7 June 2017.

Alina Tugend is a writer for The New York Times and writes mainly on mental health.

This article presents how colleges are becoming aware that students do experience anxiety and

depression and therapy is available for those students to overcome this these diseases. Tugend

provides a lot of facts and sources to back up her information provided. The audience would be

all college students and colleges administration as well. This article is packed with information

more than any other article I have examined. Many schools that are discussed in this article have

conducted surveys for their students to see if there is any prevalent cause for anxiety and

depression.

I will use this article when discussing ways different colleges have tried to deal with the

anxiety and depression spreading around their college. I will provide some of these different

studies in my research essay to have examples of way to get rid of these disease. Based on the

credibility of the author and how reliable this article is, I believe I will get a lot of good

information put into my essay from this particular article.

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