Treating Special Snowflakes May Keep Mental Health Providers from Treating People with Real Problems

There’s a certain level of mockery that we just can’t help but level at college special snowflakes. It’s hard not to mock people who report to mental health providers because a speaker they dislike will speak on campus. It doesn’t matter they don’t have to even be on campus at the same time. Nope, they’re there, and that’s all that one needs for a complete meltdown.

However, it does appear there’s a downside to this that the campus social justice jihadis have failed to consider.

From The College Fix:

Statistics show mental health problems are a serious and growing problem facing college students.

The issue is a complex one that has on some level been overlooked and neglected as administrators offer counseling and safe spaces for students upset over campus speakers or ideas they don’t like. Such offerings can diminish the real and pressing mental health concerns facing some students.

“You don’t have to be a psychologist to see the absurdity of an elite American university offering mental-health services in response to a talk no one is required to attend. But such political theatrics aren’t objectionable only for free-speech reasons,” Clay Routledge, a professor of psychology at North Dakota State University, recently pointed out in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

“A minority of students on college campuses legitimately struggle with mental illness, and they deserve support. They are collateral damage of psychology’s abuse for ideological purposes,” Routledge wrote.

…

Routledge said mental health issues are a serious problem, and making matters worse some college students grappling with real illnesses do not seek or receive any mental-health services. With that, it is important campus administrators do not to confuse mental illness with discomfort from new ideas, he said.

Let’s lay it all out here. If a college can provide X amount of treatment to people with mental health issues, and Y social justice zealots descend on providers over a Ben Shapiro speech they didn’t actually listen to, then the number of people those providers can help becomes X-Y.

These people aren’t mentally traumatized, they’re just upset. They’re bothered that someone at their school likes someone they find objectionable. That’s not a mental health disorder in and of itself.

When it crosses that line is when you decide you warrant counseling from a professional simply because you think you’re traumatized, thus making it more difficult for people with real issues to get the help they need.

Why is it that the very same people who berate cultural appropriation see no problem with actually taking resources meant for one particular group of students? I can’t wear a kimono or a sombrero, but an SJW can prance into a therapist’s office to kvetch about how Charles Murray wrote things she didn’t like years ago and now he’s going to actually speak when the guy who’s thinking about opening up his wrists couldn’t get in to see anyone.

That is appropriation. Me wearing a sombrero or practicing yoga or having Chinese food doesn’t stop people from those cultures form doing anything. Taking up a finite resource for your petty bull? That does.