Is there something insidious exposing college students to higher rates of anxiety and depression? Not quite, say leading college-counseling experts, who point to answers in a nuanced web of cultural, social, and political changes. Ben Locke, the executive director of the Center for Collegiate Mental Health, believes fears that students have suddenly lost coping skills are unfounded. “You don’t lose resilience as a country, as a population, in five years,” he said. Despite initially discovering that demand for counseling services has increased rapidly in recent years, in further analysis of individual trends, such as rates of attempted suicide, the center found relatively stable growth rates over the last decade. Only one trend, however, saw a significant jump: the proportion of students seeking counseling services under a category named “threat to self,” which involves thoughts of suicide or self-harm. This specificity, Locke said, suggests a surprising conclusion: that large-scale changes in national policy and culture over the last decade have, in fact, worked.

In 2004, Congress signed into law the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act, which began funneling millions of dollars toward suicide-prevention research, including early interventions and referral programs. High schools and colleges around the United States started to become more aware of the mental-health issues their students were facing. “When students are in treatment, they are far less likely to be at risk.” Locke said. “In the last decade, we have been telling students, parents, roommates, friends, if you see somebody who is struggling, refer them to service.” Beneath the statistics, the rise in demand for counseling-center services suggests a heartening prospect: that concerned parents and students did as they were told—helping make visible people who might have otherwise suffered in silence.

Certainly, coming of age in a smartphone culture means that millennials face specific challenges in preserving their mental health, speculated Micky Sharma, the president of the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors (AUCCCD). “We have a group of students who have led busy, hectic lives since they were pre-teens, all the way to college,” he said. This state of technology-enabled busyness has likely contributed to the manifestation of anxiety and depression in young students. However, it’s in college that many students, provided with the option of cheap and accessible mental-health services, seek counseling for the first time.

John Park, a recent graduate from Duke University, where I also attended as an undergraduate, first visited the counseling center at Duke during his senior year after his anxiety and depression, which had always been in the background, began to inhibit his daily life. Worried about his grades and whether his choices of major and college had been right for him, his schoolwork suffered. On his worst days, Park said, the anxiety would overwhelm him so much that he would stay in bed, waiting for his brain to shut off. He turned in assignments late and missed meetings and lunches with friends. “I hated going through the spiraling, the anxiety attacks. It wasn’t just that half day, it was the next three days because I was behind on schoolwork.” He called the center, and two weeks later found himself talking to a counselor who encouraged him to verbalize his feelings. “It was good to hear [my counselor] talk about mental health—like when you go to a physical and the doctor takes your height, weight, and blood pressure. It felt the same way,” he said.