Pushkin One fateful day every spring,
high school seniors who've applied to Yale University are invited to log onto a special website to find out
if they made it in.
Only about 6% of applicants will get good news.
But for that lucky few, it's time to celebrate.
Some students even post their reactions on YouTube.
It's kind of a thing.
When students find out they got into Yale,
that all their hard work has finally paid off and their college dreams have come true,
they are understandably really, really, really excited.
But once students start attending college, all that joy,
all that relief they felt at getting in, it fades pretty quickly.
I've seen this first-hand both as a professor of psychology at Yale and as head of one of the residential colleges.
In the last five years, rates of college mental health problems have skyrocketed nationally.
Over 60% of college students report feeling overwhelmingly anxious in the past year,
and over 50% say they felt completely overwhelmed in the past week.
Rates of depression in 20-year-olds have doubled since 2009.
Which is crazy.
Our country now has more than twice the number of young people in serious psychological distress than we did just 10 years ago.
More than twice the number.