The pandemic has not been kind on any account, but especially when it comes to mental health. We have been forced to stay indoors, isolated from the rest of the world, having to deal with the uncertainty of a world overtaken by a brand new virus in addition to all of the preexisting struggles of everyday life. This can easily become too much to bear all alone, but it was hard to try and get in contact with the right services to get help as everything was closed down for such a long time. 

At a Boston college back in 2020, when everything about the pandemic was still the most fresh and most confusing, a girl signed up for a peer support network. She said that it had helped her to work through her anxiety during the height of the pandemic. Talking to fellow classmates, she felt that her concerns over COVID were validated and that she was not as alone as she had thought. 

Researchers who were surveying college students found that a large sum of them had begun to turn to each other for help and were more likely to look into peer counseling. These counselors are fellow students who have gone through about 30 or so hours of training. 

Though, despite this training, peer counseling can obviously only go so far and cannot replace professional mental health faculty on campus. While it is nice to have those students who are willing to help their fellow classmates, they are not fully equipped to completely handle a full blown mental health crisis on their own. Because at the end of the day, they are just students, some of which might be struggling with their own issues and that kind of burden can weigh heavily on them. It is probably best if these services are used when a student just needs someone else to talk to, but not when they need to seek out actual counseling from a licensed therapist or psychiatrist. 

Overall, this is a great program to have, as it makes reaching out for help easier because students tend to feel more comfortable confiding in someone their own age as compared to someone who is the same age as their parents.