Why So Many StFX Students Are Struggling With Loneliness and Mental Health

Mack Murphy and Haley Qualizza are back. The two StFX Student Union Vice Presidents — Mack for Campus Affairs, Haley for External Affairs — were such compelling guests in their first appearance on the podcast that Justin and Anuj made them the show’s first-ever returning guests. Last time they covered student life in Antigonish broadly. This time there was unfinished business: at the end of that first episode, the topic of mental health came up just as time ran out. Mack mentioned it was basically her whole area. So they came back to do it justice.What follows is an honest, data-grounded, and personally revealing conversation about student mental health.The Unique Problem of Getting Help in AntigonishThe conversation opens with a structural issue that many residents may not be aware of: students at StFX who have learning disabilities or mental health conditions that require formal accommodations — like extra time on exams through the Tramble Centre — need a clinical diagnosis to access those supports. And you cannot always get that diagnosis in Antigonish.If you suspect you have ADHD, dysgraphia, autism, or any number of other conditions, you have to travel to Halifax or Sydney, pay out of pocket, potentially book a hotel for multi-day assessments, and navigate all of it alone — often in your first year of university, the first time you’ve ever managed your own healthcare without a parent. Mack knows this from personal experience: her own dysgraphia diagnosis cost roughly $1,700 out of pocket and required a four-hour assessment in Cape Breton. For students already under financial stress, this is simply out of reach. The result is that students who are struggling — who are doing the work but have nothing to show for it in a system that requires documentation — fall through the cracks entirely.The Numbers Are StarkA recent study found that only 36% of college students are thriving — reporting high levels of success in relationships, self-esteem, purpose, and optimism. That means roughly 64% are not. More striking still: 52% of students report experiencing loneliness. That’s one in two people on any given campus, at a rate significantly higher than the general population — one in six of whom experience this level of loneliness globally.And loneliness is not just uncomfortable. Chronic loneliness increases the risk of premature death by 25% — higher than smoking. This is not a wellness talking point. It is a public health issue.Why Is It Getting Worse?Both Mack and Haley point to the pandemic as a formative event that shaped the socialization habits of an entire generation. Students who were 14 or 15 years old when lockdowns hit learned to equate being social with being online — physically alone but digitally connected. That pattern never fully reversed. And social media has compounded it by creating a culture in which asking someone to hang out, showing up somewhere new, or doing anything visible feels like a potential source of public humiliation. The “fear of cringe” is real and it is paralyzing. It stops students from making the small, awkward moves that human connection actually requires.The shift away from group work in university classrooms — driven partly by concerns about AI-assisted writing — has quietly removed one of the most reliable engines of peer connection. Hayley notes that her first group project of second year didn’t happen until her second semester. The structured, low-stakes opportunity to be thrown together with strangers and figure things out has quietly disappeared from many students’ university experience.What Can Actually Be Done?The practical suggestions in this episode are worth writing down, whether you’re a professor, a community event organizer, or just someone who lives here.For professors, the advice is direct: force interaction. Assigned groups, seminar-style presentations, case studies discussed together — these aren’t just pedagogically sound, they’re a mental health intervention. Students will not, on their own, reach across the room to someone they don’t know. But if a professor puts them in a group and gives them a problem to solve, connections form. The initial cringe passes. People laugh together. It works.For community organizers, their message is equally clear: students want to be at your events. They are not unapproachable. When they show up in a huddle in the corner, it’s not because they’re too cool — it’s because they are just as unsure about approaching the adults in the room as those adults are about approaching them. The fix is simple: go talk to them. The language of your invitation matters too. “All are welcome” and “we want you there” are very different things, and students feel the difference.On reaching students in the first place: skip Facebook entirely. Use Instagram. Email works too — and if you contact Mack or the student union directly, they can help get the word out to society presidents and student groups with real reach on campus.The Bigger PictureThere’s a broader point threading through this episode, one that connects to themes the podcast has returned to again and again: Antigonish is a small town, and that smallness is both the problem and the solution. Students come here from all over the country and the world, often for the first time living away from their families, into a place without many of the urban supports — clinical, social, commercial — they may have taken for granted. The town cannot easily fix the diagnostic gap or the broader loneliness epidemic. But it can close the distance between the university and the community. It can make events that feel genuinely welcoming to students. It can have conversations like this one.Hayely’s final word to Antigonish residents: “Talk to students when you see them at events. We want to talk to you.” Mack’s: “Keep standing up for what you believe in, and you’ll find the people you need to be around.” Get full access to Let's Talk Antigonish at letstalkantigonish.substack.com/subscribe