Campus Suicide and the Pressure of Perfection

[Mastadon]

@luciethelakie Unfortunately, Dr Schwartz’s response is worded in a way that it is very easily misinterpreted (witness both Blossom and throckmorten).

@throckmorten if there were data/analysis that directly addressed the question, then Dr. Schwartz would have referenced it (as he did in comparing the population of kids who are not in college to the population who are in college)

@blossom I agree with your interpretation of that particular statement. The problem is that you cannot assume that the population represented by “elite institutions” behaves in the same manner as the population represented by “all four year colleges”.

In fact, if we can agree that Harvard and MIT are “elite institutions” then a recent article in the Boston Globe provides data that indicates that in at least two elite institutions, suicides are more prevalent than at other four year colleges (by almost a factor of two).

But, if we choose to call Boston College and WPI “elite institutions” then things get murky, because they both have suicide rates an order of magnitude lower than Harvard and MIT.

Unfortunately, science relies on data and no other colleges were either willing or able to provide data.

Kudos to both MIT and Harvard for providing data that doesn’t necessarily paint themselves in the most positive light, but may help us better understand and deal with this complex, but important issue.

The rate of student suicide at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology continues to be notably higher than the national average for college campuses, a painful and concerning statistic for leaders of the premier university who have for years tried to improve the school’s suicide prevention, mental health, and counseling programs.

Over the past decade, the university’s student suicide rate has been 10.2 per 100,000 students, according to a Globe review of public records as well as university and media reports. More recently MIT’s suicide rate has been even higher; over the past five years the campus has reported 12.5 suicides per 100,000 students.

The increasing rate has been driven by the school’s undergraduate population, whose suicide rate in the past decade has outpaced that of the school’s graduate students — 12.6 to 8.5.

The national average for college campuses is roughly between 6.5 and 7.5 suicides per 100,000 students, according to three major studies that looked at undergraduate and graduate student suicides from 1980 to 2009.

At least one other local school, Harvard University, has an above average rate for its undergraduate population. The rate of suicide at Harvard was 11.8 per 100,000 undergraduates over the past decade. When accounting for both undergraduates and graduates, the rate at Harvard was 5.4 per 100,000.

The Globe this month reached out to more than three dozen other major colleges and universities around the country — many of which are identified as peer institutions of MIT — requesting that they share information about the number of student suicides at their campuses over the past two decades. As of Friday, only three schools — Harvard, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and Boston College — had provided the data.

A spokeswoman for WPI said the rate there over the past decade has been one suicide per 100,000 students. A spokesman for BC said a student there committed suicide during the 2011-12 academic year, but the school had not had any other cases in the 30 years prior.

Twenty-three of the schools declined to participate. Some, including the University of Pennsylvania, said that their institutions had not collected the data and had no way of gathering it now; others expressed concern about comparing figures between colleges, noting that some institutions may have different standards and methods for collecting data on suicide.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/03/16/suicide-rate-mit-higher-than-national-average/1aGWr7lRjiEyhoD1WIT78I/story.html

[renaissancedad]

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/09/health/suicide-prevention-college-campus/?iid=ob_homepage_deskrecommended_pool&iref=obnetwork