New Books in Sociology A Light in the Tower: A New Reckoning with Mental Health in Higher Education
Feb 26, 2026
A conversation about making higher education both rigorous and radically supportive of mental health. It spotlights ableism on campus, masking and late neurodivergent diagnoses, and rampant anxiety among students and faculty. Concrete classroom changes are described, like ditching punitive attendance rules, offering accessible design, easier accommodations, and funding neurodivergent-led initiatives.
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Pandemic Revealed Preexisting Campus Mental Health Failures
- Higher education's mental health crisis predates COVID and the pandemic revealed existing systemic weaknesses.
- Dr. Katie Rose Guest Pryal connects faculty and student struggles, arguing COVID exposed long-standing institutional problems rather than creating them.
Words Determine Whether People Seek Help
- Language shapes treatment: how campuses talk about mental disability determines whether people seek help or hide their struggles.
- Pryal prefers the term mental disability to capture psychiatric, developmental, and acquired conditions and reduce stigma that deters disclosure.
How Law School Design Fueled My Near Addiction
- Law school design intentionally produces high anxiety, with depression and addiction rates rising dramatically by first year end.
- Pryal recounts nearly developing alcoholism during her first year because the program's structure is a harmful feature, not an accident.
