Out of mind. Out of sight.

So it’s been almost two weeks now that I’ve been back at Boston College and the transition has been really fun at times and at other times really weird. I’m super glad to be back with some of my best friends walking around campus and laughing at how small and adorable all the new freshmen look. It got me thinking a lot about my freshman year though and how many people I noticed who seriously struggled to adapt to their new environment in a healthy way. Loads of anxiety meds and anti-depressants started making their way around the student body. Maybe it was separation anxiety from leaving home for the first time. Maybe it was just a challenge to establish a group of genuine friends. For any number of reasons, I can say for a fact that I witnessed serious mental health issues facing college freshmen in my first year. And I don’t want the same to happen to the newcomers now.

Obviously there’s a lot of ways to tackle this subject and I’ve actually written about mental health a lot in previous blogs. As a senior now, I could give plenty of advice such as: looking for friends in classes that interest you instead of just who lives in your dorm, joining clubs or sports teams that create a strong network, leaving campus as a nice escape from the bubble sometimes, etc. But what I really want to zero in on right now is not the people that might end up developing some form of anxiety or depression at college. I want to focus on the people surrounding them, idly standing by.

Ever heard of the bystander effect? It’s when there’s an emergency situation and there’s a lot of people witnessing it, but people either hesitate or don’t intervene at all. This happens because the amount of people seeing the emergency unfold creates a division of responsibility among the bystanders— people who consequently don’t feel a personal obligation to react. There’s some pretty horrific footage online (if you feel like checking it out) that serves as perfect evidence of this phenomenon. For example I watched a video where a man suddenly collapsed on a sidewalk in Manhattan and several people simply walked right by until nearly a minute passed before anybody even approached him.

So you might be wondering, does this only happen when the victim of the emergency is a stranger to the bystanders? The answer is a hard no. From my own personal experience and countless anecdotes from a large selection of my peers, I can tell you that close friends and even roommates fall under the influence of the bystander effect. Without naming any names, I know of people who stayed in bed for two weeks non-stop and I know people who suffered serious eating disorders and other people who quickly developed alcoholism and a guy who fell down a disturbing internet rabbit hole of racial supremacist dogma. All at my college campus. All with no real help from even their closest by-standing friends. Ranging from consistent drug abuse to depressive behavior to manic behavior or even all the above, it’s astounding how often people will choose not to address the threats they’re witnessing.

Anyway there’s more to the bystander effect that just what I’ve already mentioned, especially when we’re talking about college dorm life. Social psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley were the first to popularize the concept back in 1964. They attributed the bystander effect not only to the division of responsibility that occurs when there are multiple witnesses present, but also the impact of social influence. Meaning that people look to each other’s behavior to determine how they should react.

Think about it in the college context. Mental illness is an emergency just like someone collapsing on the street, only it’s way more subtle. And people are generally very busy with their own lives on campus and off. So if one of your roommates is depressed and it doesn’t appear dramatic enough to take immediate action, most of the roommates will go on about their day. And what else? Even the ones that were initially more concerned will likely be influenced to do the same and simply put it out of their minds, even if it’s still in their sight.

Here’s a simple truth that we all know but don’t act on very well: if you consistently ignore or hesitate to respond to the apparent suffering of your peers it will always result in consequences that are much more catastrophic and grave than any prior intervention would have caused.

Just to be clear, I would never say or imply that a bystander is at fault for the suffering of any individual in their lives. Sometimes people really just don’t know how to react and it essentially paralyzes them. That’s okay. But simply bringing up your concerns to another person can be a great first step to getting your friends/peers the help they need. By the way, I don’t think I know any freshmen at BC right now honestly but it’s not like this message only applies to them.

And as long as one person gets what I’m saying, then at least maybe one person might not have to suffer as much as they would have.

Filip, again.