All around the world, worry is a prominent characteristic among society. Parents worry about their kids, kids worry about missing the bus and everyone has at least a little fret in the world. But even though we all worry, there is one place where stress and worry seem to always be at the top of a never-ending peak.

Anxiety, that feeling of uneasiness we all possess at one point or another, climaxes in college, because of the stress of finding time for class, work, paying bills, a social life and even sleep. For some students, that constant tug of distress eats at them, developing into a disorder. For others, an anxiety disorder has been with them for a while and they’ve learned how to work with it. And for some students, they are hardly ever anxious and don’t have to worry about anxiety at all.

Although some people have it a little, some a lot and some not at all, anxiety is the leading mental illness. While 40 million adults in the United States have an anxiety disorder on some level, only 36.9 percent of those people receive treatment.

While getting help for an anxiety disorder can seem to cause even more anxiety by just going in for treatment, in the long run, it is worth it.

Accepting you have a problem which needs treatment is half of the battle. Having a mental disorder has such a negative stigma attached to it, which makes it hard to accept you might need help.

Along with a negative stigma, many people believe mental illnesses, such as anxiety, are not real. Although, mental illnesses are, in fact, real. One in five people around the world experience a mental health issue and one in 10 young people have experienced a time in their lives with abnormal depression.          

Sometimes, on certain days, it can be hard to even leave your room. Leaving the room means you have to face reality and the outside world, full of stress, people and responsibilities that can seem too hard to keep up with. It can even be deciding whether going to class is worth the work.

At Iowa State, counseling is offered for almost anything. Whether you are depressed, stressed, have a relationship problem or would like some help with anxiety, the Student Counseling Services here on campus can do almost whatever a student needs. This service is also included in tuition, so if it’s already paid for, why not use it?

No one, especially college students, should allow anxiety to seize even a little bit of their time, and the only way to prevent this consumption of worry is to get help for it.