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Book Review.

In “COLLEGE OF THE OVERWHELMED: The Campus Mental Health Crisis and What We Must Do About It”, Richard Kadison and Theresa Foy DiGeronimo have addressed one of the key problems faced in colleges by students. The book was originally published in September 2005 by Jossey-Bass and it comprises of 308 pages and the content is divided into two parts one addressing the problem with the other giving the solution. Richard Kadison is an experienced psychiatrist and the current head of Mental health services at Harvard University. Throughout his career, he has been focusing on research on mental health in colleges and how to treat them. Theresa Foy DiGeronimo is the co-author of the book and has experience in writing more than 35 books which are focused on parenting and education. Combining the expertise and experience of the two authors, I feel this is one of the best books I have read on matters of mental health among college students. Mental health is a problem that affects all the people in the society but due to the recent data showing it is now more prevalent among college students, this makes it an important topic of research. The mental health problems can lead to stress and depression among the students making them use different coping mechanisms such as drug and alcohol abuse and contemplating suicide which makes them lose focus in their pursuit for getting an education.

The mental health crisis in our colleges is a concern as addressed by the authors and the issue need to be solved to ensure students are not affected. There is an increased number of students who have been reported to have mental health problems in colleges which raises the concern for all the stakeholders in the society. The future of the world is in jeopardy if the people entrusted to make the world a better place will suffer from psychological problems while going to institutions of higher learning. By writing the book, the authors illustrate how managing mental health plays a key role in the academic success for students in colleges. The book offers a good insight of how college life affects the students and how we can deal with the rising number of mental health problems. The target audience for the book is college students, administrators, health officials, college counselors, parents and the government. The authors highlight the major factors that contribute to stress among students and they include financial problems, cultural differences, pressure from academics, struggle with identity, sexuality, expectations from parents, relationships among others. If the life of college students is affected, their education will be affected hence ending up affecting all the other stakeholders in the society.

The book is divided into two parts with one part containing four chapters that look at the problem while the other part has three chapters that look at the solution to the problem. Chapter one talks about the normal developmental issues that affect college students. In chapter two, the authors look at how competition and pressure is a cause of the problem and highlights racial, extracurricular, cultural, parental and academic as the main factors. In chapter three, the focus is on financial worries and social fears that affect the students. In the fourth chapter, Kadison and Theresa explain why the mental issue is a crisis in colleges and how the above factors leave the students to be hopeless and helpless. Under the second part, chapter five looks at what institutions of higher learning are doing about the crisis and what efforts should be added to help the students. In Chapter six and seven, the authors look at the roles that parents and students play respectively to solve the issue. The authors did a good job by structuring information in this manner as it makes it easy for someone to read and if one is interested in a specific part, they can look at it since it is properly categorized.

By looking at the personal stories from students who have gone through stress in the last chapter, one can be able to relate and know the signs and symptoms of a college student going through stress and how they can be able to offer help. The book can help the students succeed in their education rather than wasting away their lives due to stress caused by different factors. One strength that I identified in the book is that the authors identified the solutions to the problem which include encouraging parents to ensure that the line of communication is kept open. Communication has been established by the authors as one of the key elements to help students avoid mental health problems which apply to both parents and administrators. A look at different coping mechanisms such a college student’s contemplating to commit suicide, generating eating disorders and abusing drugs and alcohol among others are important as they can be used by counselors, parents, and administrators to monitor the behaviour of students. Various suggestions have also been given in the book for both parents and administrators on methods they can use to help students cope with stress and how they can generally deal with students.

This is one of the best books I have read about how stress affects college students and the best methods to address the problem and I would recommend it to someone interested in doing research or gaining more insight about the subject. Education is important but if the life of students is affected while they are pursuing education, then measures need to be established to ensure the problem is solved. The authors have carefully looked at looked at all the aspects of mental health issues among college students in the 308 pages of the book. It is also suitable for all people as it has focused on looking at how to help students succeed in education and overcome stress, the effects of stress, stories from students who have gone through stress and how they overcame it and the signs and symptoms of stress among college students. The structure of the book is also simple and the content is neatly organized which makes it easy for one to read the book. I would commend the authors for doing a good job in writing about the topic as I feel it is important considering most of the young people in the society go through college at one point of their life and they can use the knowledge from the book to ensure they succeed in their pursuit for education and be able to deal with stress effectively.

Works Cited

Richard Kadison and Theresa Foy DiGeronimo. “COLLEGE OF THE OVERWHELMED:

The Campus Mental Health Crisis and What We Must Do About It”. Jossey-Bass,

(2005): 1-308. Print.

Book Review.

“How to Stop Worrying and Start Living” was first published in 1948 in Great Britain by Simon and Schuster and it was written by Dale Carnegie who is an American author. It is a self-help book consisting of 306 pages which are aimed at giving advice to people on how they can manage fear and stress in their lives. Dale was born in 1888 and encountered is death in 1955 and has authored many other books which focused mainly on making people aware of how they can ensure self-improvement in their lives. In a world where we face various challenges every day, this is a good book on how to deal with the fear that can help us improve our situations and ensure we break fear and stress before it affects us. In the preface, Dale indicates that worrying a lot in life is what inspired him to write the book and the position and situation of his life at that moment prompted him to help other people who go through the same. This is a book aimed at all the people who need to get an inspiration to ensure they focus more on more important things in life instead of focusing on fears which do not help but bring harm. We deal with stress and fear every day and in future that will still be the case and knowing how to handle it will help us to “start living” and “stop worrying” as the author states. Human beings encounter fear in all situations in life and it is hard to find a situation when a person will comfortable state they are not going through fear. Some of the most common fears include fear about finances, relationships, work and achieving expectation we set in life among others. There are also various quotes from the book aimed at inspiring people.

The book is divided into seven sections each discussing the various topic about fear, how it can be analyzed, how to stop it among others. In the first section, the author gives the fundamental facts that we need to know about worry which is grouped into four parts. In this introductory section, Dale states that worry comes from things that are either out of our control or things that are not in the present moment. In the second section, the focus is on the techniques that people can use to analyze worry and Dale give four key methods which are getting the facts, weighing the facts, acting on decisions and analyzing worry through questions. The third section talks about how to break the habit of worrying before it breaks the person. Dale suggests that people should focus on the present and future and let go of the past and ensuring we use our time to work as it helps to keep fear away. In the fourth section, Dale gives seven ways which can be used to set the mental attitude and ensure that a person achieves peace and happiness. This was the most interesting section according to me and I find the content useful and applicable to my life as well to that of others. The seven methods given include meditation, happiness, less worry about enemies, forgetting ingratitude, counting blessings, not imitating others, being nice to people and always looking for positives in the negative things we encounter in life. Prayer is discussed in section five as the perfect method that can be used to conquer worry. In the next section, the author states ways people can use to stop them from worrying about criticism. In the last section, Dale gives six ways that can help to fight fatigue and worry therefore ensuring that a person will always be in high spirits. The six tips can be reduced to eliminating distractions and ensuring one can get plenty of rest every day.

There are numerous books written about how to deal with stress and fear in the world but “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living” has been written in a way a reader can be able to relate and apply the concepts in their lives. What I love about the book is how Dale pairs the facts about fear with compelling stories based on people who once were affected by worry and how they could ditch the problem. Using examples helps people to get interested in what is written and that is one strength of the book. I would commend the writer for a good job in writing the book but I feel it would have been better if Dale would have selected a section a write about how to identify the root cause of stress and fear. Most of the people go through fear but they are not able to know the root cause and the methods suggested in the book can help solve the problem in the short-term. If a person can identify the root cause of a fear, they will be able to know the short-term and the long-term method of solving the problem hence eliminating the fear easily. The title of the book is also catchy and it can easily capture the attention of an interested reader. Truly, being able to know how to deal with fear can make a person start to focus on important things in life hence progress and avoid living in fears.

“How to Stop Worrying and Start Living” is one of the best books I have read about self-improvement and would recommend it to anyone looking for something interesting to read. Dale has carefully looked at various aspects about fear and at the same time, he gives solutions on how it can be handled to ensure it does not affect the life of a person. The author has looked at one of the challenges that people in the world have been facing for a long time and given solutions of how they can be addressed. One might question if the advice given in the book is worth since it was written in the 1930’s and my view is it is very much worth since the same concepts can apply to the lives we live today in the modern world. Dale in the book emphasized that stress and fear can have a positive and negative impact on the life of a person and it all depends on how we chose to deal with it. The structure of the book is simple and the flow is easy making it easy for a person to read. Use of stories makes the book more captivating and one can easily read it repeatedly. The specific ideas given in the book which includes how to deal with stress are very useful which make the book worth to read. The author did a good job and the book is really inspiring and worth reading.

Work Cited

Dale Carnegie. “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living”. Simon and Schuster, (1948):

1-306. Print.