Blogs and Stories
The Campus Suicide Crisis
Tuesday's tragic death at NYU was the latest in a rash of student suicides. Kathleen Kingsbury on why it's so hard for colleges to prevent their kids from killing themselves.
By all accounts, few would have predicted that New York University junior Andrew Williamson-Noble would have apparently ended his life by leaping from a 10th floor balcony at the main campus library in the early hours of November 3. Friends and classmates described the 20-year-old Irvington, New York, native as happy and cheerful. Professors spoke of a talented student.
In the wake of the tragedy, students and faculty expressed incredulity over how anyone with such a bright future could be so troubled. “The impulse for self-harm—particularly among young men and women with so much talent and so much to live for—is incomprehensible to me,” wrote school president John Sexton in an email to the NYU community.
“Many students who may not have even gone to college five to ten years ago are able to attend because they can control their mental illness with counseling and medication.”
Suicides on college campuses have been declining now for three decades, but a new array of factors unique to today’s college campuses could be exacerbating efforts to combat such deaths. Student suicides still total some 1,100 a year nationwide, making suicide the second leading cause of death among college students after motor-vehicle accidents. The Jed Foundation, a New York City-based college suicide-prevention program, estimates that one in ten college students has considered taking his or her own life. So it would be no surprise if, in the wake of Williamson-Noble’s death, administrators at NYU and across the country are asking themselves: Are we doing enough?
Such fears may also be heightened by the fact that many campuses have seen a recent surge in students seeking mental health services. The 2009 National Survey of Counseling Directors, conducted by the University of Pittsburgh, found that 94 percent of directors reported an increase in students with severe psychological conditions, including depression, eating disorders, and drug and alcohol addictions. In addition, 91 percent believe a greater number of students are arriving on campus already taking psychiatric medications.
The increasing use of such drugs means that more students with psychological problems are now able to keep themselves functional enough to make their way onto college campuses. “Many students who may not have even gone to college five to ten years ago are able to attend because they can control their mental illness with counseling and medication,” says Anna Scheyett, a clinical professor of social work at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill who researches campus mental health crises interventions. Though it should be noted that while this causes additional worries for school administrators, being at school may offer students a certain protection as well, as young adults not attending college are nearly twice as likely to commit suicide than those enrolled.
But schools have long been forced to walk a fine line when it comes to how best to help such students. Some, worried about liability suits, have, in the past, overreacted, sending potentially suicidal students home and even banning them from campus.
On the other hand, moving too quickly can infringe on federal disability laws. New York City’s Hunter College, for instance, agreed in 2006 to pay $65,000 to settle such a case. Plus, the U.S. Department of Education has warned at least a handful of schools that they might be in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act, which also protects people with mental illness. Add in privacy rights that limit when mental health professionals can notify parents about red flags, and many in academia often feel that their hands are tied beyond simply urging struggling students to visit campus counseling centers.
John Talks Joe
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
Top 10 College Admissions Tips
Kathleen Kingsbury covers education for The Daily Beast. She also contributes to Time magazine, where she has covered business, health and education since 2005.
How to Write a Winning Ivy League Essay
Kathleen Kingsbury covers education for The Daily Beast. She also contributes to Time magazine, where she has covered business, health and education since 2005.
The Best College Food
Kathleen Kingsbury covers education for The Daily Beast. She also contributes to Time magazine, where she has covered business, health and education since 2005.
More repulsive TDB sensationalism. The headline on the home page all but screams: "Campus suicide crisis...the latest rash of student suicides"!
The truth appears in the third paragraph of the article: "Suicides on college campuses have been declining now for three decades..."
There is no "campus suicide crisis" and TDB's editors have grotesquely distorted the content of what turns out to be a measured and instructive article.
amen.
Have campus suicide rates been in decline over the last three decades? Yes. Are they on the rise, again? Yes.
College students see no future. No jobs. No hopes. No change. Their dreams are ended. They are facing the hard realities of life after being pampered by their parents. With the recession, many parents cannot afford to educate their kids. Salaries are in decline.
Due to the lack of jobs, many college grads will not be able to afford families and homes. They will not attain the same standard of living and quality of life attainable by their parents. They will be unable to achieve the levels of success enjoyed by their parents.
America is rapidly becoming a secondary world power. These kids grew up in the best of times in the greatest country in the world. When they collectively get over their depressed state perhaps they will get angry enough to get involved and change this country. Until that time we will see an increase in suicide rates not only among college students, but all young people their age who realize they have no future.
I'll tell ya what's wrong with kids these days..........Some things never change. :-)
There is no evidence that suicide increases because career opportunities are marginally lower or because there is a national malaise.
Thank you. Suicide is not something one does when one is feeling blue. Mental illness is a huge problem in this country, treatment is expensive and hard to come by.
As a Junior at NYU, I've been around for the last three suicides on campus. I was not, however, around for the 5 student deaths in the 2003-2004 school year.
It's just so sad to wake up in the morning and get an email from John Sexton and see on the Washington Square News that yet another student has killed himself. NYU has so many resources available to students, it's a shame to see them not being taken advtange of by students in distress.
85% of American kids are not prepared to compete on a global level. They are neither sufficiently motivated nor educated. They want to be trained on a technical level in colleges and universities. They want to take a short cut to a degree in three years rather than four. Most can only speak English. They are not sufficiently educated in the arts, history, or geography. They are shallow and provincial. Most of them are not conservative enough to manage their lives. Many come to college unprepared and leave unprepared for the world workplace.
Most of the American pie has been taken. Their chances for opportunities are slim. Many good jobs were out sourced during the Bush years and are not going to return. They are at a dead end. The military is the only way out.
( " They are facing the hard realities of life after being pampered by their parents. " )
While kids in India and China are going through grueling education systems,
we are coddling our kids with artificially elevated grading curves so NOT TO OFFEND,
and trophies for everyone, win or lose, so NOT TO HURT FEELINGS.
Political correctness makes some kids soft and unprepared for the REAL world,
and they are in for a rude awakening.
Other factors could be the break down of the family,
distractions of overwhelming 24/7 technology where people
seem more connected,
but in reality don't have any down time just to chill.
And . . . The "entertainment" (movies) we have these days,
seems to have taken on a darker tone.
And what's up with all the skulls everywhere on clothing ???
Good thing we still have clever, funny shows like "30 Rock," and "The Office."
---------------------------------
( " Many good jobs were out sourced during the Bush years " )
Let's not make this a Political Party issue.
Both parties in conjunction with their Lobbyist
"donations" have been complicit in " Outsourcing. "
Major Outsourcing began in the Mid 80s'.
I was there, I remember being in a company meeting in 1986 when they
told us some of the manufacturing will be moving to China.
Good post. Thanks for the insight.
If you got A's for your essays, it's because they were "so not to offend."
Lucinda Roy's No Right to Remain Silent: The Tragedy at Virginia Tech is a detailed account of the steps she and others at Virginia Tech took in order to get Seung-Hui Cho to seek help as he was clearly a disturbed student, whom many feared was dangerous to others as well as himself. The failures of VT have not been widely discussed in the media. They are closely examined here.
I think though, people need to be nicer to each other.
It seems like the people who get ahead, are the ones that are able to be the coldest and meanest.
Maybe it is a simplification, but that is what people who appear to get ahead by stepping on others do too.
I took a third year stat/econ course, that the format was radically changed in its new edition. So the old version had open book exam the new one didn't, and of course it was a required course to take to get into the risk management course, decision making, so people panicked, and there was little explanation on how to shift from one format to the other.
That is what people have to do, especially when the derivative market was being exploited/abused the way it was/is being.
You have to be able to see those derivatives on the chart, especially when they are so volatile.
And we are all derivatives in a way, derived from situations, so we have to be able to hang on for the ride, cause of the volatile shifting which is really nerve racking.
Wake up! People should treat others courteously and with respect. Period. If you think that the ability to be nice is more important than the ability to be educated and competitive you are off the mark.
When you sit on management's side of the desk you realize that the fault is not with the education system and not with teachers. You cannot give away degrees. You cannot educate the coddled, the unmotivated, the socially shallow, the self-centered, and those who feel the world, like their parents, owe them a living.
Just as the house health care reform bill suggests that these whiners be covered by their parents' health care insurerers until they are in their late 20's, American society continues to pamper these losers.
That is right. We should be more like square yellow paper.
You're the loser. You're the one who has a shallow understanding of the world. Mental illness is not caused by parents who provided too much for their kids.
I think you can compare living with extreme change/derivatives, with being forced to ride on a teatatotter where you have no control of how much weight is placed on the other side.
So you have no idea when one side will have more weight on it than the side you are sitting on, so you have no idea when you will be left stuck up in the air, or if the weight will be removed, so you come down to the ground with a real thump.
The fear of the unknown, and the actual feelings of getting stuck in the air or landing with a big thump, can make you cry or laugh, depending on the support system around you.
"It seems like the people who get ahead, are the ones that are able to be the coldest and meanest."
Just another excuse and more whining. You are confusing critical thinking and competitiveness with being cold and mean. So much for your survival skills.
squareyellowpaper:
Dude. Lighten up.
I'm inclined to agree with you that there is a sense of entitlement run amok in today's young folks. But to suggest that those who take their own lives do so because they are "weak or coddled," is pretty thin. I mean, when someone jumps off a ten story building, there's more at play than a weak economy or poor job market. This is depression and despiar in the extreme.
Also, if we're looking to correlate depression with reality, then these kids would be killing themselves after they left school---not while they're still on campus. Hell, campus life is nirvana.
I agree that critical thinking and the possession of competitve edge are excellent tools. I'm abundant in both areas. Unfortunately they only get you so far. In the corporate world--where I, like so many other make a living--eschewing ethics, integrity, and well...just plain fucking people over does garner the most immediate reward from some bosses.
So I think Doreen makes a good point. Survival skills and a conscience arent mutually exclusive.
It depends. Often the best business people are college drop outs, who see a need, possibly from their own need, and find a way to fill it. Now look at Bill Gates and the person/people who started facebook.
For the economy to expand and shift, people get left behind, often the ones that were the most successful when things were the other way.
I think I do make a good point. What craziness, paying for $1000 ethics course, when Madoff apparently was having the time of his life, when he was still young enough to enjoy it, by sc-ewing/bullying people.
That would have been worse than taking auditing and accounting theory at the time when Madoff was admitting to sc-ewing people for possibly decades by scaring and yelling people. He wasn't even making trades, now we know. The authorities could have found out sooner, if they had forced the issue of existence.
I think therefore I am. And it hurts.
All these kids have been coddled by their families way into adulthood. Mommie and Daddy tell them how wonderful they are each and every day of their lives. So when adversity hits, they crumble.
So there's something to the "School of Hard Knocks" after all. If nothing else, it prepares you for the dog eat dog of the real world.
That's why they cannot cut in on their own.
Siouxie921:
Wow. So let me get this straight. A parents job isnt to love their children, but to beat them down in order to "toughen them up?"
Within the vast handbook of parenting I do believe there is a place for genuine tough love. Unfortunately, a lot of kids who arent loved or valued, who by default, attend this so-called school of hard knocks rise through the ranks and achieve success and/or power.
I have absolutely no problem with that. But..
Problem is, some of these folks are so fucking bitter and jealous of the well- adjusted people whose parents actually loved them, that they feel its their divine right to professionally and personally punish those people who didnt suffer enough in childhood.
Ive met co workers and bosses who really think its their right to make other people miserable. As such, its always been my theory that more often than not, the wrong people commit suicide.
Those people, like this kid in the story, who take themselves out, do so for personal reasons. Some people call their act a "selfish" one. I disagree.
But more often than not, its the most miserable, self-involved people--those who werent loved and feel somehow cheated--who devote their lives to making other people miserable. And they think theyre providing some sort of public service. Pretty ironic.
That is really true isn't it.
I think too, people might thing they have failed the people they love, for some reason, and they don't want to be a burden.
noontime: "Campus life is nirvana"? Maybe for you. But not for the kids who don't fit into any social groups and are failing their courses.
I sort of wonder, if it more about stage fright and related mental injury, verses some biological brain disease.
I remember my first year stat class, people were walking out, dropping out, after they got their assignments back. I remember one girl didn't believe me that the graph/equation was not normal, and she was one of the ones who walked out, and I think all these people could have been fine nurses, a few decades ago, when people were more important, in a functional way, than technology.
People have to learn how to derive, and not to take everything so personally, especially with those who manage by egos instead of objectives.
And i think working as a team, instead being so alone, could help but maybe not, it depends again if it is managed by ego instead of objective.
It comes back to war. What is the objective of war. It looks like, you try to kill as many people on the other side as you can because you get shot down, by your competitor, well golly gee, how scary is that? And how barbaric. Cave men could cope better than normal people like moi and toi :).
I think it is ridiculous to paint all college students with the same brush, as coddled, overpriviliged children whose parents hide the real world from them. Many are students struggling to even afford college, working one or two jobs to afford their tuition. Many have parents who can't afford their tuition, who aren't getting enough financial aid, and are constantly worrying about their finances all while trying to get good grades.
Many suffer from illness and extreme stress. While many of you seem to think college is a carefree environment, the fact is that college students are more prone to sleep very little and suffer ill health due to stress. This is magnified for any student with psychological illness.
Many have experienced the "real world" and haven't just been dwelling in their parent's ivory castles. Plenty are from urban environments. They ha witnessed crime. They may have lost parents or have parent's who don't give a shit about them.
Instead of using this tragedy to judge the faceless mass of college students, maybe we should be feeling sorry for a boy who simply couldn;t fdeal with all the stress.
So many of the issues faced by today's young adults are the same developmental crises faced by previous generations coming of age. Adolescence is the most turbulent & difficult period of life, even for the most healthy & well-adjusted people. Many mental illnesses typically have their onset in early adulthood- e.g., Schizophrenia, Bipolar, Panic Disorder, Generalized Anxiety disorder, OCD. Substance abuse is rampant among this demographic. Immaturity is usually associated with poor impulse control, increasing the chance that when they have suicidal thoughts, they will act upon them.
I have personally evaluated & treated hundreds of college students. I actually find that the four conditions most highly correlated with suicide are substance abuse, Anxiety Disorders, impulse control disorders, & Personality Disorders.
Contrary to most people's instincts, Major Depression is less predictive of suicidal behavior than are any of those four.
The biggest reason why the problem persists to the degree it does remains the reluctance of those who need help to seek treatment. Any person who says nothing even when they see a friend in great distress is really no friend at all. We all have a moral obligation to inform people about the truths vs. myths regarding mental illness. Only when all sorts of people feel free to discuss their problems without fear that they will be stigmatized or ridiculed will we make a meaningful dent in this public health problem. We all can help.
How do you explain Fort Hood Rampage. That is what I am talking about.
People do no fit into neat little profiles, and it is easy to predict what one hundred people might do, much harder to predict what one person will do.
As this case and Fort Hood Rampage so clearly demonstrates.
There is an article on another news channel that says 75% of young people at recruiting age that went to recruiting office, are either not fit, don't pass the entrance exam, or have criminal records.
So that means 3/4 or 3 out of 4 young people that offered themselves to the recruiting office were not fit to be accepted.
So beyond deriving a probability of how many young people do not meet military standards,if you push these people too far they could break, that is why they are not fit for the military. They would not be able to stand till while being yelled at.
It is fine to push the war, oh 2 wars, but who is going to fight them?
Sure we could throw square yellow paper out of a plane and hope the other sides runs away or stay hidden in their tunnels.
Sadly, in all probability, cavemen are fitter than we are.
Sadly the Doctor B's in the world are not getting the facts straight.
According to the military, the problem related to unift kids has never been like this before. Statistically. The quantity.
Just from observation you can see how these new kids are a lot different, and you can't blame them.
Sure it is is easy to be in a nice office, look at symptoms, look them up in the catalog, and voila, you have a dx, ok a mcdiagnosis.
But if the military is actually saying this is a national security risk, why would they lie about that?
Sure we can send drones out, to the enemy territories, if terrifying them with masses of yellow paper does not work.
But what happens if we are actually terrifying our own side, our own kids.
Yelling at people who are breaking is a bad idea. Add some humiliation and abuse, then send them to the Dr. B's of the world, still does not solve the problem. It will just cover it up.
The fact, kids can't pass basic requirements to get into the military, when the nation is in two wars.
Well golly gee. I feel anxious.
Wake me up when you come to a point.
Fort Hood. An example of what I am talking about.
As Dr B appears to be insinuating, that ordinary people are only deriving opinions from instinct.
Obviously the military has incredible access to data related to the new generation we have produced, and if they say the lack of fitness which I would stretch to assume it to be toughness, as in being able to stand still while being yelled at, and the lack of such a psyche, could be a national security risk, why would the military lie?
Pseudo science does not win wars. Cannon fodder does.
This is the link, if you think I am making this up.
http://www.sphere.com/2009/11/03/70-percent-of-young-americans-are-unfit -for-military-duty/?icid=main|main|dl2|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sphere.com%2F 2009%2F11%2F03%2F70-percent-of-young-americans-are-unfit-for-military-duty% 2F
The link does work, just make sure no spaces are added.
Who gets to define what help is really needed?
The person who needs help, or the person who is selling mcdiagnosis, possibly $185 a pop.
It is just like the bank taking a person's last 40 dollars, for an ns fee because they would not take a deposit 1 minute past four.
Being on the other side of the door. What a hassle.
And then take 40 dollars for one fee, and then for the next one, and before you know it, try to pass an exam, without eating for two days, everything mounts up, and people telling you off, and the only escape might be to jump out of the window.
Where are the jobs? Where are the loans for people to buy homes, so people can get jobs building them. Who owns the money now?
Our young people derive from us. And maybe now we see a new meaning in the old line "the meak will inherit the earth".
If people cared about mental health, they would look at all the mental hazards we face.
If people cared about morality, they would look at all the moral hazards we face.
And if they cared about GOD, they would stop the killing. And of course both sides, all sides. All angles.
This is the time we must turn our weapons into ploughshares, and we will. Not because we choose to, maybe, but out of necessity.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Reality can be a bitch to deal with. Although I was never one of the "coddled" types, I remember going through a period of extreme distress that was the result of the youthful blinders being removed. I'm no mental health expert but I can say that college does strip people of their ability to dream and look at the world through the lenses of childhood. I spent 4 years in the military before I went to school and I still found the experience lonely and depressing. In the service, you have your squad and you're constantly surrounded by people that are going through everything together. That makes all the difference. Whereas in college you're just another individual competing with other individuals for your future. It can be a bit much.
Insightful. :-)
I think I was lucky enough in my first two years of college to be situated in a small college house with a group of people who ended up being my core group of friends and functioned, although not necessarily in a militarily structured way, as a sort of support group. I think that made a huge difference for me adjusting.
Now grad school was what completely took me out, and I think in this case it was the issue of having a small "squad" with which you share everything, but also with whom you're in individual competition for a small, specialized group of jobs. It has definitely required new ways of coping, more so than undergrad.
But you're quite right, if I hadn't had that inner group as a freshman, I probably would have felt very lost, too.
dooreen 4:30 PM
Sadly the Doctor B's in the world are not getting the facts straight.
Dooreen - It strikes me as rather arrogant that you believe that YOU know more about the diagnosis & treatment of mental disorders than anyone else. You're 100% wrong.
Your ignorance & lack of insight into your own problems are painfully obvious in your nonsensical, disjointed ramblings.
You need help. But you lack the courage to admit that you are ill & you lack the capacity to change, so you are a truly a hopeless case.
Before YOU accuse a high-ranking faculty member of a major medical school who has received national awards for outstanding performance in medical education of not having facts straight, maybe you should be looking to understand a little more about the issues at hand. This article dealt with college suicides. My posting offered useful insights which are highly relevant in helping people better understand this complex issue & offered useful advice for people who may know someone in need of help. Your inane postings are irrelevant & pointless.
I think it is one thing to question self serving biases of organized religion, but another not believing in anything, well you have to.
You have to have some philosophy, and ability to frame some kind of strength, especially now when people are so cut throat to each other.
This horrible thought police stuff going on, which on its own merit, even though it is just a pseudo science not evidence based, is a religion similar to what drove the crusades.
To not believe anything, not to have the ability to consider philosophies, that help us function at a higher level, can lead to a culture which is unable to process thoughts independently.
And without an expert helping, leaves people crippled inside I think, while giving experts, power almost of a small "g" God.
We have these so called experts, diagnosing people without even know their nam, let alone examining the weight that they are carrying that is probably very real.
We are a script culture now. We all know the scripts.
What we don't know.
We don't have to know how many times a person has been abused, whether they have enough money to buy food, after books etc are paid for, or whether they have good cause to fear for their personal safety in their neighborhood.
They can diagnose a person with having abandonment issues, as if the issues were fantasy, without even finding out whether the feelings are valid.
So maybe hardening your heart works.
Once these so called experts label a person, the injury that may be caused, is probably going to be very hard to heal let alone proove.
Because social problems cannot be cured with a pill, or cheap/expensive talk. If they could, they would have been by now.
You can break someone's arm, and it is easy to diagnose.
When it comes to the problems of the heart and psyche, heaven help those people who get dxed by a person in less than an hour, who might not know your name let alone your actual situation which has caused mental distress.
Such people, and their pseudo science, rubber stamped diagnosis, possibly at $185 a pop, scare me.
Thought police, pretending to be practicing evidence based medicine, scare me too.
Do no harm, ain't that the oath.
Regardless of having a damaged psyche or not, a person knows when they do harm or wrong, or they are technically criminally insane.
Typo corrections: We have these so called experts, diagnosing people without even having to know their name, let alone examining the weight that they are carrying that is probably very real.
Where is the quality control in that?
Bad medicine can and most likely will lead to injury, injury a person will not even be able to prove. That is the scary part.
Discussing coping skills related to situations, where experience is gained after you need it, is totally relevant.
Probably outside factors a person cannot control, unless they develop some functional strategy to give them the edge, is part of the problem, we all know that.
To pretend it is some mysterious function that only experts can diagnosis possibly could lead to over medicating students, especially if it an actual outside situation that is causing the distress, and not a biological disease.
And possibly even rebound effects related to medication, could lead to worse things than the actual problem.
A person goes to a doctor with a broken leg, the leg is usually functioning in about 6 weeks. If the doctor broke the other leg, so the person came out of the office with two dysfunctional legs, that would not be just malpractice, that would be medical abuse.
And questioning the process, is science. If processes are not questioned, if assumptions are not questioned, then the danger of the practice becoming a pseudo science could be real and and questioning is not only relevant but probably one more public service that will be thankless.
Just have to jump in and say my son went to a very difficult technical college and was not coddled in any way, in fact he experienced things his parents haven't, living in an urban, crime prone city. He also experienced high stress due to his school work load and lack of sleep, believe me, we worried for his life and health all the time.
Did he come out of this stronger, smarter, tougher? You bet!
But he also flirted with loneliness, mental exhaustion and physical illness, and suicide was whispered about on campus but kept quiet by the administration. It is a very real issue and needs to be addressed by college campuses in a caring, personal way. We as a family were actually helped by having the school intervene at a low point in our sons health and give him the opportunity to take a break and come back, which I am proud to say he did and went on to graduate and find a decent job. These suicides are a terrible tragedy and schools must have outreach to their own students. They must care.
Thank you.
As a first time user, your comment has been submitted for review. It can take anywhere from a few hours to a day or two for your comment to be reviewed, depending on the time of week and the volume of comments we receive.
Please log in to leave comments.