With the recent rain, heavy winds and cold temperature, some students may find themselves suffering from seasonal affective disorder (SAD).
Sufferers of SAD undergo depression or increased anxiety during specific times of the year, especially fall and winter months. However, for some students, depression and anxiety are a part of their lives all year long.
Senior Kim Wall can barely remember her worst panic attack, which happened on campus during class.
"I remember being in class and looking at a computer screen," she said. "I couldn't really hear what was going on around me, next thing I know I'm in the hallway with my best friend, who was trying to console me.
"That's the problem when I have a panic attack - I don't remember what happens. I remember the feeling, but not what goes on during the attack."
Wall, a fashion merchandising major, was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and clinical depression shortly after she began college in 2001.
She is not alone.
Mental illnesses are more common on college campuses than students may think, according to Carl Gilleylen, director of the Center for Student Development.
"Mental illnesses are real common and if you're talking about the college population, they're just as common here as the rest of the population," he said. "We probably don't have quite as many serious mental health issues as with a typical community, but we do have some."
Many disorders fit into the category of mental illness or mental health issues, including various anxiety disorders, depression and bi-polar disorder, but some are more common on campus than others.
"If you're talking about the kind of mental illnesses we have here on campus, probably the most common thing is kind of what people expect: anxiety and depression," Gilleylen said.
The University of Memphis' Center for Student Development does offer free counseling and help for students who may find themselves sadder than normal or having other problems.
"A lot of students that we see here, we wouldn't give them the diagnosis of mental illness, but some we do," Gilleylen said. "A lot of things we work with, especially here on campus would not be things we would say would be mental illness, sometimes it's an adjustment problem.
"Students will come here and they're having trouble kind of adjusting to being in college, being away from home, or adjusting to being in a new environment where there are new demands. Or they're just stressed out because they're trying to juggle two jobs and school, not sleeping and those sorts of things."
No matter if termed mentally ill or not, there is a stigma attached to seeking help for mental illnesses or adjustment problems.
One student who wished to remain anonymous for this very reason said she doesn't want a lot of people to know about her mental illnesses. She goes to a private psychiatrist and said she doesn't even tell guys that she is dating about her illness.
"I don't want people to know because I think they'll treat me different, like I'm not normal," she said.
But those who can help students encourage them to come at any cost.
"We deal with it here a lot. We tell students, 'Well you know people come over here to this building for lots of different reasons, nobody knows why you're here,'" Gilleylen said. "It is one of the reasons why we have this policy about keeping things confidential, so people have fewer problems dealing with any stigma that may be attached to them having a mental illness."
Wall has also attended counseling sessions with on-campus counselors.
"I haven't found my niche, the one I saw found one thing and decided to stay on that one thing," Wall said.
Gilleylen and Wall both blame the media for creating the stigma attached to mental illnesses. The media only shows the most severe cases, which causes people to become less understanding, and sometimes afraid of those with mental illnesses.
"Media is somewhat at fault," Wall said. "If you watch a movie they make it look like depression is contagious or that you're a psycho, which is why some people don't get help.
"I think it's (the stigma) outlandish, unfounded. If people would take the time to learn about it and not just rely on TV."
There is a history behind the stigma attached to mental illness, Gilleylen said.
"It has to do with the movies and the people they saw in the movies for some reason or another deserved to have something bad happen to them. It just didn't happen to good people."
However, so-called "good" people do get mental illnesses. Mental illness is not biased and can affect anyone, Gilleylen said.
"It kind of goes across the board in terms of ethnic groups, socio-economic class, and so it can strike all sorts of folks," he said. "People tend to think that other people get that, not me or people close to me."
The only people more susceptible to mental illnesses are those with mental illnesses in the family.
"Some things do tend to run in families," Gilleylen said.
However, there are other causes besides genetics.
"It's just like physical illnesses in some ways, there's a lot of mental illnesses that people don't have any control over," he said.
"They get them for whatever reasons and it can be related to lots of different kinds of things - biological, as sometimes they are, social or environmental - things like that."
