After years of not studying and sometimes not acknowledging the number of suicides that take place on college campuses, many schools are beginning new programs to recognize mental illness in students – the cause of most suicides – and eliminate the stigma associated with the disease in the hopes of reducing the number of suicides.
Suicides are the third leading cause of death among 18- to 24-year-olds, but there are currently no studies that separate the number of suicides in that age group between people in college and those not in school, said Dr. Mark Goldblatt, an instructor at Harvard University and the New England president of the Association for Suicide Prevention.
Making the distinction is an important step in reducing suicides on campus because there are issues that arise in college that may lead to suicides, as students do not have their usual support systems around them, said Jed Foundation founder Donna Satow. Satow started the Jed Foundation in 2000 after her son, Jed, committed suicide as a sophomore in college without his family and friends knowing he was in distress.
Satow said college suicides are rare and most that do occur are preventable by getting students and teachers to recognize the warning signs of clinical depression and helping the student get medical attention. Goldblatt said suicide is the third leading killer in the age group partly because young people are not at as great a risk for killers such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes as older people are – not because there is a huge number committing suicides in the age group.
Because there are no recent, complete statistics available on suicides on campuses, the mental health resources provided by each college or university can vary widely. The Jed Foundation recently began a pilot program with Cornell, Harvard, Columbia and Yale universities and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to gather data on each school’s mental health resources and determine which methods work best and reach the most students, Satow said. The Jed Foundation will then work with schools across the nation to suggest the most valuable resources for each college to provide students.
“A lot of students don’t know where the counseling center even is, even though it is a good resource already,” Satow said.
The Jed Foundation also runs a website, Ulifeline.org, for students to research mental illnesses and find help at their school in a medium they are comfortable using, said Ron Gibori, executive director of Ulifeline.
“I think that there’s a major discontent between what the students want and what the counseling services are providing,” Gibori said. “No one’s really positive what each school is doing because there’s no set standard, so that’s what we’re trying to determine right now.”
Dr. Alan Siegel, chief of mental health services at MIT, said recognizing students’ mental health needs “is something that has been on people’s minds in the mental health service for a long time,” but the issue has gotten more attention over the past few years, especially as more and more students enter college with identified mental health problems.
He said an MIT task force researched the way the university “did business and dealt with students” in all areas of campus and academic life, including providing mental health services, from 1999 to 2001. In response to the findings of the study, MIT has revamped and expanded its mental health resources to provide more counselors, more available counseling hours and more training for residence life and academic advisors.
At Boston University, Dr. Leah Fygetakis, director of the Counseling and Wellness Center, said the university actively addresses the issue of suicide prevention, but some students might not notice because “we don’t have anything falling under a huge banner of ‘campus-wide suicide prevention.'”
“Basically, we will do workshops or programs,” she said. “It’s more trying to assist people that students might talk to. You don’t do an event like this and say, ‘Come to this event if you’re struggling with suicidal thoughts,’ because most people won’t come, so we provide the information to people students might talk to, like RAs or freshman peer advisors.”
One of the tools Fygetakis uses to teach these groups is the Association for Suicide Prevention’s new film “The Truth About Suicide: Real Stories of Depression in College.”
“The purpose of the film is to help students recognize friends who are in distress – particularly suffering from depression – and help them seek treatment,” said Dr. Lucy Davidson, director of education and prevention practice for AFSP. “It’s also a process of helping the campus as a community help people rather than shutting them out.”
Fygetakis said she prefers to run programs specific to BU rather than work with large organizations to implement their programs. She said she also fears the effects of information students can receive on the internet or elsewhere in prevention programs where students are not in direct contact with mental health professionals who can monitor their situations.
“We just try to kind of get people to be aware of how to approach and have that kind of conversation,” after which the student can get more help if necessary, she said.
Satow said changing the stigma associated with mental illness is important because studies have shown mental illnesses are caused by chemical and hormonal issues and are no different than illnesses like kidney disease.
“I think when people realize these things are treatable, there won’t be that reticence” to avoid recognizing mental illness and seek help, Satow said. “You should at least understand the signs [of depression], and if you understand the signs, it is preventable.”
MIT’s Siegel said it is often difficult for students to admit they have a problem and need help.
“Students feel like they need to be perfect and they need to be successful and they need to fulfill the expectations they’ve had forever and their families’ expectations, and for things to get in the way are very difficult and they don’t want to notice them,” he said.
But Goldblatt said recognizing the illness before it results in suicide is the first step in preventing future suicides.
“Suicide is not something that is not understood or a fearful phenomenon,” he said. “”It is something that comes out of depression and depression is treatable. If you know somebody who is suicidal or is depressed and you can get them help, that will go a long way toward prevention.”
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