Gwendolyn West
Gwendolyn West, MA ’22, earned a master’s degree in human development and family science at Â鶹ÊÓƵ, and she is doing further graduate study in clinical mental health counseling at Youngstown State University. She’s also a part-time faculty member in Â鶹ÊÓƵ’s Human Development and Family Science program. She sees some of her students struggling, and she wants to help.
During the pandemic, a lot of resources that I was using to support myself and my mental health were also changing, or no longer available.
I was actually diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder while that whole process was going on. It was good that things got shaken up a little bit, because that's how I got to the right people and the right diagnosis.
I think dissociative identity disorder is interesting because it looks like a lot of other things. It looks like anxiety, it looks like depression, it looks like mania. You sort of check all the boxes of the options available to people who are attempting to diagnose and treat.
Dissociative identity disorder is largely misunderstood, even among mental health professionals, but especially in the public eye. It’s somewhat uncommon, but it’s also just really underdiagnosed. It’s important to me that I don’t hold on to any shame about my disorder and to be out about my experience. If I'm visible with that disorder, then other people can be, too—is the way I look at it. I think that’s the way we get the support we need.
Some students thrived during the pandemic. There were many ways we could accommodate students, and then when we returned to in-person learning, some of those accommodations got taken away.
I’ve noticed that students in my classes still need support for whatever they’re managing. Their mental health is still being impacted even though the pandemic has shifted. They’re struggling to keep up with workloads. They’re struggling with basic things like food and having a roof overhead—and all those things impact their classroom presence.
They’re needing more support and more interpersonal one-on-one conversation, just being seen and being heard. I think that was the biggest change that I made to my syllabus and to the way I taught my classes: being way more flexible and more personable and meeting every student right where they are.
I’m glad that the support available on campus is being marketed more widely at this point because I think more students who hadn’t needed those resources before now need them and don’t know where to find them.