A Pamphlet on Pain

Sixth grade health class brought an array of notable experiences. We had the honor of hearing about the mysteries of sex from our sixty-year-old teacher, we saw enthralling virtual demonstrations of sexual intercourse at the tender age of twelve, and we received myriad pamphlets on drug use, detailed human anatomy, and the like. Many middle schoolers became armed with a wealth of knowledge that would allow them to confidently enter this world of sexuality with dozens of images of STIs forever embedded into their memories.

Education was exhaustive in many ways, yet there remain areas of information left untouched by these classes.

Despite all the instruction I received, I found holes in my arsenal of knowledge as I grew older. Some of the more difficult, controversial, and prevalent topics were coincidentally left out, it seemed. I, like many others, was left unprepared. Although there was plenty said about contraception, nobody ever mentioned options like the morning after pill. Nobody tells you how to help your friends cope with life after rape. Schools teach the logistics of sexual intercourse and safe sex, but nobody even touches the emotional aspects of it, including topics like sexual identity. A plethora of teachers, counselors, and adult personnel preach about mental health, but nobody can prepare you for the reality of dealing with suicide. Nothing prepares you for being diagnosed yourself.

Obviously these are issues that one cannot field without difficulty. But they are real, and they were realities for my friends and me during high school and today. In each of these situations, I sought for something to ease or numb the pain; but no search, regardless of breadth or depth, could produce a healthy answer. We realized we had been taught about the easy parts of difficult topics, we had skimmed the surface of these challenges; when the difficult parts hit us, we were woefully unprepared. None of this was covered in the pamphlets in sixth grade health class.

UC Berkeley offers a variety of resources to help address this issue-five free counseling sessions are offered at the Tang Center, there are mandatory online education courses on alcohol and sexual assault, and the school does its best to engender a culture of acceptance and diversity. In a school of nearly 40,000 students, however, devising a plan to try and ensure a healthy experience for all students is a monstrous task. Although Berkeley certainly does a better job of talking about the hard issues than what most students receive in secondary education, there’s more to be done in the way of mental health services at Berkeley. The amount of students in need of a stronger support system here is overwhelming. It needs to be made clearer that there is readily available help that will indeed be helpful. There should be more focus on the mental and emotional tolls difficulties take on a person. Rather than focusing on the sole idea that these issues occur, let’s focus on how to help people cope with them because although they may be difficult to talk about, they are a lot harder to endure in silence.

In the spirit of more comprehensive education about life’s hardships, let’s embrace the discomfort of discussing tender issues for the sake of those around us. Rape, mental illness, and sexuality, among many other topics, are harsh realities for many of us, and it does a student no good to suffer through an unenlightened, unaided experience with those difficulties. Berkeley needs to pick up where our secondary school education left off: we should write more pamphlets.

Cover photo: sanickles, Creative Commons Licensing