{"id":193,"date":"2014-11-07T00:54:33","date_gmt":"2014-11-07T00:54:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wou.edu\/westernjournal\/?p=193"},"modified":"2014-11-13T02:19:49","modified_gmt":"2014-11-13T02:19:49","slug":"down-portraits-of-a-university","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/down-portraits-of-a-university\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cDown\u201d – Portraits of a University"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Portraits of a University:<\/h3>\n

As part of a brand-new weekly Journal column, Nathaniel Dunaway meets with ÀÖ²¥ÊÓƵ students to discuss their lives and their experiences in the world of higher education. In doing so, he hopes to find an answer to the question what does it mean to be a college student in the 21st<\/sup> century? <\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

This week, Psychology major Adam Pettitt offers his thoughts on the value of the college degree, and the stigma surrounding depression in America.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n

I\u2019m a dual major in biology and psychology. This is my fifth year here. I actually went to University of Idaho for a year, then I took two years off, and I realized after those two years off that I wanted to be a psychiatrist. I knew that I wanted to help people. So because of that, I came here. I applied a week before school started.<\/p>\n

There are six grad schools I\u2019m applying to this year. But I honestly don\u2019t expect to get in, just because clinical psychology programs are notoriously hard to get into. They have a one-percent acceptance rate. So they have about three-hundred people apply, and three people get in. I want to go to Yale, Harvard, UNC, University of Texas, UCLA and Duke. But honestly, the number one place I want to go to is Yale, but it\u2019s not because it\u2019s Yale. <\/em>It\u2019s nice that it\u2019s Yale, but\u2026 the way these programs work is that you\u2019re not applying to a program, you\u2019re applying to work with a person, in their lab, doing research. I want to look at the genetics of depression.<\/p>\n

My first year here, all of a sudden, I just got slammed with depression out of nowhere. I was twenty-one at the time, and either you\u2019ve been through depression and you understand what it entails, or you haven\u2019t. I think that before, when I thought about it, I thought \u201coh, somebody\u2019s just sad,\u201d but it\u2019s so much more than that. It\u2019s a way of thinking. It\u2019s a descent into someone you\u2019re not. When I was down there, there was no being happy. It\u2019s something that if you don\u2019t have the right tools -and even if you do<\/em> have the right tools- it can be so hard to dig yourself out of. It\u2019s incredibly devastating to the people who encounter it.<\/p>\n

I made an appointment with a psychiatrist, and he told me everything would be fine. I went through ten different anti-depressants for a year before anything ever worked for me. It was the worst year. Anti-depressants work in the way that you have about a four to eight week window before they can even have an effect. Finally I found one that worked, and it was like magic. I actually had a graph on a big whiteboard, for my own edification, where one was the worst that I\u2019d ever felt and ten was the best and five was completely apathetic and neutral. So every day I\u2019d say, \u201cok, this is where I\u2019m at,\u201d and slowly the graph would get higher and higher, and all of a sudden, five wasn\u2019t my top anymore, and at the six or eight week mark, I realized \u201coh, this is how life is supposed to be. This is how I used to be.\u201d It was like waking up from a dream.<\/p>\n

The way anti-depressants are prescribed is\u2026 basically it\u2019s a flow-chart. Basically, if you\u2019re lethargic and depressed, then you get prescribed this kind of anti-depressant. And what ends up happening is that when one doesn\u2019t work, you switch to another kind, and switch to another kind, until you finally find the one that works. There\u2019s actually a flow-chart in one of my textbooks, literally <\/em>a flow chart. And I was at the end of the chart, right before MAOI\u2019s, which are the oldest type of anti-depressant, and electroshock therapy. So I\u2019m really glad I stopped there. I thought\u2026 it\u2019s 2014. How do we just have a flow-chart for prescribing this? There has to be a better way. So I started looking into the genetics of depression and the genetics of anti-depressant response.<\/p>\n

On my mom\u2019s side of the family, my uncle killed himself. A lot of people on that side of the family suffered from depression. There is a genetic basis to it. I started doing research on how certain people with certain genetics will favorably respond to certain anti-depressants. That\u2019s when I realized that this is what I want to do. What I went through, nobody should ever have to go through. I would not wish that on anybody. If I could be the one who helps people, to prevent people from becoming depressed, from getting down there\u2026 and also using the genotype of people who do suffer to discover which anti-depressants will work for them and which won\u2019t. I think that it can be done. It\u2019s going to take a lot of collaboration across the disciplines, from psychology to biology to neuroscience, but I think that it can be done, and that it should <\/em>be done.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a general lack of knowledge about mental health in this country. If there is this genetic basis, if there is \u2013as it\u2019s simplified in the media- this chemical imbalance in people, then it\u2019s not people\u2019s fault that they\u2019re depressed. It breaks my heart that people have to endure depression while there are all these stigmas against it. Things are starting to shift and change, but it\u2019s going to be a battle before depression becomes something that\u2019s acceptable and understandable as an actual health disease rather than a purely mental disease.<\/p>\n

We should be able to tailor and individualize treatment for people, so that after one anti-depressant doesn\u2019t work, one treatment doesn\u2019t work, they don\u2019t give up. I didn\u2019t make the choice to stop trying, but there are people out there who do. It\u2019s not going to be one-hundred percent figured out, but it\u2019ll be better than a flow-chart.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By Adam Pettitt,\r\nedited by Nathaniel Dunaway<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
If you\u2019re a Western student and would like to be interviewed for the Portraits of a University column, contact Nathaniel Dunaway at journalentertainment@wou.edu<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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