Via Best of the Web Today comes this piece documenting an alarmingly high rate of mental illness among college students:

Almost half of college-aged adults had a psychiatric disorder over a one-year span, based on research criteria that ranged from bipolar disease to substance abuse including smoking. Few sought treatment, the study found.

About one in five students failed to fulfill an obligation, had a legal problem, did something dangerous or caused social problems by using alcohol, the study found.

My late wife used to opine that there were too many psychiatric disorders in the DSM – she thought a lot of the conditions the profession sought to treat were simply symptoms of poor judgement. If these people are ready to consider smoking, failing to fulfill an obligation, doing something dangerous and drinking too much in college as evidence of mental illness, I am kinda surprised they came up with only almost half. Back in the day, I pretty much hit all those within the first month of arriving on campus.