Earlier this week I came across a very interesting article in the New York Times about Sallie Mae's newest financial product, tuition refunds. These policies refund a student's tuition if the child gets so sick that he or she has to withdraw from school. It refunds your tuition 100% if the child has a physical illness and 75% if the illness is mental.
The injustice here is obvious, especially because of the increasingly high rates of mental illness amongst college students. Even more disturbing, the article mentions that Sallie Mae and other insurers often require proof of a multiday hospital stay to prove that a mental illness such as depression or anxiety is real. What type of system forces vulnerable, sick young adults to spend time in a mental institution, scarring their pysche even more, in order to prove their illness? These types of examples cause me to yearn for physical tests or brain scans that can decisively prove the existence of these illnesses; we shouldn't have to rely on worsening symptoms or intervention as proof of a condition.
This discrimination, legal because of technicalities (tuition refunds are not technically health insurance) causes me to reflect on my own college experience. While I didn't have to drop out or withdraw, that fact seems driven, in retrospect, by luck and tenacity rather than medical circumstances. Where is the safety net, financial, academic, and social for students who have to withdraw or take time off because of their mental illness? College can be hard and isolating even for healthy students, and it breaks my heart to see mentally ill students disadvantaged in any marginal ways.
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