Worried Colleges Step Up Efforts Over Suicide -NYT

[Rose Siding]

snip>
Increasingly, college officials and mental health experts have come to realize that many of the most vulnerable students - the ones prone to self-injury and suicide - are like Ms. Thompson: they never go near the counseling centers or reveal anything about their experience before college. As a result, colleges are stepping up efforts to find them and to get them into treatment, sometimes forcing them to leave temporarily.

The goal is to help students like Ms. Thompson. But colleges have more at stake. Suicide - the second-biggest cause of death among college students - can be costly, injuring reputations and prompting litigation. The suicide of a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Elizabeth Shin, in 2000, and strings of suicides at New York University, George Washington University and the University of Illinois, have drawn wide attention. There has also been a rise in lawsuits involving student suicides.

Ann H. Franke, a vice president of United Educators, a company that insures 1,200 universities, colleges and schools, said suicide prevention had risen in priority as claims had risen; her company, Ms. Franke said, now has a "handful" of claims, up from none six years ago
........
To address the problem, Emory University and the University of North Carolina are inviting students to fill out anonymous mental health questionnaires. Duke University is asking faculty members to be alert to changes in behavior - noticing, for example, when a student suddenly becomes sullen or quiet, or stays away from class. Columbia, New York University and Cornell now place counselors in residence halls. The University of Illinois and the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash., are requiring any student who threatens or attempts suicide to attend counseling sessions.

http://nytimes.com/2004/12/03/education/03suicide.html?hp&ex=1102050000&en=1c824738a3a2204f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[frank frankly]

1. Mandatory Psychiatric Testing to the rescue!

Wow, comrades, we are almost THERE.

I'd like my RFID now, please. Thank you.

[WMliberal]

2. ah, the real reason had to be litigation worries

The same reason schools crack down on alcohol and hazing.
They care about the students, true. But they don't do anything about it until someone sues. Then they go haywire across the board...

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. An increase in suicide? It's an ugly world out there, and with Bush in

office, it's getting worse by the minute.

[TahitiNut]

4. "Suicide can be costly"???

Jaysus! So it's a matter of moolah? "Reputation"? Have we freaking lost any compassion for anything other than the almighty fucking buck and institutional ego?

These "colleges" have a LOT to learn! :puke:

[DemBones DemBones]

6. Money is always the bottom line.

You can never get cynical enough in this life. . .

[frank frankly]

7. cynical? try this for cynical. this is an OP to push for Mandatory Testing

"Why aren't you taking your medicine, comrade?"

"Uh, because some of this shit ain't been tested and because the DSM isn't the law!"

"Tut-tut, comrade."

*NOTE: I worked child psych for years. Yes, drugs help a lot of people and yes counseling is essential, but when it become mandatory and when it becomes law, we are toast. And that is happening.*

[Dogmudgeon]

8. Ever read "After the Good War" ... ?

Peter Breggin's sole attempt at science fiction. And a pretty nasty piece of satire it is, too.

--p!

[frank frankly]

10. no, but thanks for the tip. i'm reading "The Handmaid's Tale" by Atwood

and it is the scariest thing EVER.

to anybody who is leaving this country...GOOD LUCK! i wish you all the best and please don't let this madness destroy the whole world.

[melnjones]

5. regardless the motive,

I have to say most of these steps are positive in my opinion. I just graduated from undergrad in May, and were it not for our actively promoted (and sometimes forced) counseling services, several people I know very well probably would not be alive today. I don't know about other schools, but at my school I honestly believe it's about compassion and not money. I hope other schools are the same.

[ikojo]

9. Is it any wonder there is an increase in suicides...

This generation of college students are among the most overscheduled group of kids ever. From the time they were toddlers almost every minute has been planned for them, even their play. They go away to college and for the first time in their lives there is no one lording over them, telling them what to do every waking minute of their lives. This can be overwhelming and scary.

Some kids react by getting involved in drinking and drugs and others react by isolating themselves and committing suicide.

[Igel]

11. Just an increase, not new.

My first year in grad school a chem student threw herself off a building; some people thought it was installation art for a few minutes. Her diss advisor was going to a new school, wasn't taking her with him, no new advisor available. Friends said she took word he was leaving very hard, with a couple of years' work for nothing.

Later that year a law student went bonkers in my dorm; ran down the hall in his skivvies into the women's part of the dorm, stood on a balcony yelling for a few minutes and threw himself off. Into the bushes. Not seriously hurt. Roommate had tried to report him, he'd been acting strange.

A friend's roommate that year was also acting very, very strange. Went away for summer; never returned, his department wasn't notified, his phone didn't work, he never showed up at home.

The next year somebody killed himself in the men's showers. Was dead for an hour or two (probably) before anybody noticed that one shower had been running far, far too long. Again, roommate said he'd been acting strange for a week or two. Nobody paid attention.

Year after that a woman in my department went round the bend. Conspiracies everywhere, she was pregnant with Christ, a professor was the anti-Christ. Left the kid's father; she got custody, dropped out of school, filed suit to stay in student housing, and would routinely race down the sidewalk pushing the stroller screaming obscenities at her former fellow-students. Was raising the kid to think he was Jesus.

Students don't like the idea, but colleges are usually in loco parentis (in the parent's place). The parents like it that way (and it's increasingly true for primary/secondary schools). Very, very scary. But another one of those hard choices.