Ross Szabo, from the National Mental Health Awareness Campaign, spoke about issues concerning college students, including depression, on Jan. 29, in the Center for the Arts.

“Mental health is not just about the extremes, but issues dealing with death, divorce, breakups and loss of sleep,” Szabo said.

Szabo related his personal story, which included his struggles with depression and bipolar disorder.

“We all have differences,” Szabo said. People need to understand how to help friends, and how to educate themselves about what works for managing stress, anxiety, addictions and depression.

“It was good for him to explain the differences between being depressed and depression, because he said that these weren’t something people talked about,” Andrea Peck, a senior animal science major, said.

Szabo stressed the importance of helping young people talk about what’s going on in their lives.

“It’s hard to get students to talk about issues that have a bad stigma,” Eric Hopfensperger, an industrial technology management major, said.

Szabo said that more than 66 percent of young adults have trouble talking about their problems and emotions.

Szabo also talked about the major mental health issues on campus. Stress caused by lack of sleep, homework, relationships and classes can take a toll on college students. Those are problems that can affect anyone, no matter their race, gender or age, Szabo said.

People also have different ways of coping with such issues, and they need to figure out how to deal with their issues and stress in a healthy manner.

Students in attendance enjoyed his speech.

“I liked the way he brought the issues down to an everyday scale,” Carl Weier, a senior agriculture business major, said.

Toia Mannery, event manager for Campus Programming and Relations, said that Szabo was brought to UW-Platteville to bring something different to campus and to let people know that it’s all right to talk about things like emotions and stress. She also said that with the suicides of two UW-P students last year, there was a need for people to become better educated.