One of Jessup's beloved Psychology professors, Melanie Trowbridge, joins Mark and Rex to examine the growing mental health crisis among young adults and how the Church needs to respond.

TRANSCRIPT

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Everyone welcome to Jessup Think. I'm your host Mark Moore

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and your co-host Rex Gurney

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Rex on the show today, we are privileged to have one of our very own professors, Melanie Trowbridge, an Associate Professor of Psychology here to talk about mental health, mental health in the church, mental health on on college campuses, with our students and our families.

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Her office is just down the hall from me, and it's a it's a healthier place around our offices for heavy Melanie in our suite.

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Yes, and we know you're going to really enjoy the show and get so much out of it. Thanks for listening. And we're just happy to have you on the show. Melanie? Well, I'm happy to be here to talk about such an important topic. And one that, you know, we've had a couple of hard years, you know, I mean, every generation has hard years. But I think we can look back at the last two years and see tough years. And we also kind of see a rise in maybe an awareness of mental health concerns, or I'm hoping Yes, yeah. And definitely, I'd love to kind of as we begin the conversation, kind of look maybe at the kind of current statistics and get a picture of mental health with young adults college age, you know, and and particularly talking today about how can the church talk about this subject?

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Or how can we talk about it a little bit? Yeah. Hello.

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I'm all in anytime. There's a good discussion, healthy discussion on mental health count me in? All right. Good stuff.

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That's why you're here today. Yeah. Good.

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Good. Glad to be here. Yeah, we'd

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love to, we'd love to just kind of hear some of the research you've been looking at and statistics and go from there.

1:45

Yeah. So it's good to have research that is along a continuum that's been chronic and stable in that chronic way, we have had an uptick. But let's just talk about some of the pervasive statistic that's still in play today. You mentioned our college aged students. And I, interestingly enough, bring that into the classroom, and use our classroom, as indicative of the world at large, especially the United States, but really globally. And so I say, hey, all of you. If we're going to experience a major mental health disorder sometime in our lifetime, how many of us are going to experience that? And you know, I get all kinds of statistics, and we land on upwards of 50% of us. So that's the rule. It's not the exception. It's the rule. So if we're going to experience a major mental health disorder, which 50% of us are, what are we going to do about that? And in any particular year, 25 of us, 25% of us are experiencing a major mental health disorder. Right. So let's back it up a little bit. If we're talking about emerging adults, adolescents, you know, and that's my passion, right? And I'm an adult psychiatrists, but I'm also a child and adolescent psychiatrist, very passionate about that, because 75% of our major mental health disorders occur before the age of 25. Right? We can get a handle on that, right, before we get into adulthood. Oh, my goodness, how much better off?

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No, no, when we're talking Melanie, about mental health? Well, what's the spectrum that we're talking about? Because I think that gets confusing for people. It's like, well, I woke up today, and I have a little, you know, anxiety about this meeting. This is qualify, you know, am I am I, you know, sort of in the same, you know, bowl of or salad of mental health issues as someone who's bipolar. Yeah. So what exactly are we talking about?

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And that's interesting, because, you know, I think all of us 100% of us can capture and empathize and feel signs and symptoms of mental health issues, right. None of us are di