<p>There is an interesting article in today's New York Times about how colleges are trying to cope with suicide. It mentions, inter alia, that the rate of suicide among college students (7.3 per 100,000) is half of what it is among non- college students. Still, it represents 1,100 suicides a year for the entire college population. Another interesting statistic: of the 16 students who have committed suicide at Cornell since 1996, 9 were of Asian descent.</p>
<p>"Worried Colleges STep Up Their Efforst Over Suicide," NYT, Dec. 3, 2004.</p>
<p>I had a conversation with my son about pressure and kids committing suicide in college. I needed to do it for my own peace of mind. I assured him that if pressure felt too strong or he just felt depressed, there is support and help available from school and here at home. I told him that he was always welcome to transfer schools, come home, whatever..... I told him there was nothing that he could do wrong that would dissappoint me so much that I wouldn't continue to love and support him...and I would always be happy to have him at home if he needed to be.</p>
<p>Since he started high school, I've given him "mental health days" that he can take off from school without giving me any reason why. He gets 4 per school year. I do it because I feel like sometimes kids just need a release valve for the pressure.....</p>
<p>momsdream: I really like your idea of "mental health days". We allow kids to take (physical) sick days and we all know - kids and parents alike - that there are days when we're just not up to dealing with the world. Thanks for the idea!</p>
<p>Another interesting point was that many of the suicidal students come to college with previous, serious mental health diagnoses that the colleges do not know about. The Columbia student featured, for example, was bipolar and had a history of substance abuse, but stopped taking her meds. When she was forced to withdraw from school for a year, she was hospitalized. So, this was not someone who just felt pressure at exam time. The article pointed out that students with such histories are often the ones who do not make use of the campus counseling services.</p>
<p>I wondered, though, about the policy of forcing students to withdraw for a year. Would other students, learning about the policy, be afraid to go seek help in case the university then tells them they have to pack up and head home?</p>
<p>I have to say I think meds can be bad. I know they are necessary, but just because someone is on medication does not mean that they are able to function normally. I think that some people may feel that meds are all they need to be successful. There is usually more to it than that. Combined with that students may have a relatively new diagnosis as this age seems to be when mental illness pops up, they may not have learned how to accomodate their illness yet.
I have been on many types of antidepressants over the years and I never did find one that worked & that had side effects that I could deal with.
When I was on medication I felt like I was wrapped in cotton but if you stop taking them you can have a rebound effect where you are more affected than before you began the meds.
The pressure at school combined with possible drinking/drug use can be way too much to handle for some kids. I don't think a leave would be enough to push a kid who already wasn't there over the edge, but for someone who is still trying to deal with their illness, living away from home and trying to keep grades up too seems like an awful lot to deal with.</p>
<p>I agree with you. I didn't mean to apply that medication was always the answer. I was just highlighting the point in the article that one of the reasons for college suicide is that some students come with a long history of problems and don't seek help, rather than that college puts so much stress on kids they break. College is stressful of course, and drinking/drug use can make things worse -- especially if it's an attempt by a student at self-medication. But the point of the article was that some of the most vulnerable kids (as evidenced by their diagnoses or histories) arrive without the college knowing who they are. Perhaps before medications, some of these students would not have attempted college far away from home. I don't know.</p>
<p>My question about the forced leaves, though, wasn't that they might push a kid over the edge. They're meant to do the opposite, give the student time to regroup and address problems. It was whether a student, knowing that they might be forced to leave, might not seek help from the college services.</p>
<p>wow momsdream, my parents allow me 4 "mental health" days as well.</p>
<p>but we don't call them that. We call them "chocomans allowed to skip school days" lol. but its the same basic idea.</p>
<p>It does seem that the kids that get more stressed with school are the ones that go everyday and face the same grind. Taking a Monday, a Wednesday or whenever off
for little reason besides I felt like it can really envigorate me and help me work better for the next few weeks following.</p>
<p>Sac, another possible consequence to seeking help, is that a student could be hospitalized against their will, if they are viewed to be suicidal. In the Stanford Daily Online last week (don't remember the exact date but you can search online to find) was just such a story. A student went to health services to get his meds refilled and he was hospitalized by the school psychiatrist on a 72hr. hold in an inpatient psych ward at Stanford Hospital. It is a detailed story from the student's point of view. After he was released three days later, he also left school.</p>
<p>A couple things I observed from my daughter and her friends.
Some kids no matter their problems will not seek help.
One of her friends was "cutting" herself and seemed very depressed. She would seek out friends to talk to about her problems but would not tell her parents or go to the clinic. I don't think because of needing to take time off, but that might have been part of it.
My daughter was more proactive. She found a therapist at the school freshman year ( a NP) and saw her a couple times a month. Unfortunately, every year they changed and her junior year was probably not using her therapist as much as she should have been.
It is hard, cause I can imagine that colleges want to limit students who need extra resources whether they have learning disabilities, health concerns or both. These are a drain admittedly in both time and money and often at least in my daughters case, didn't cost any extra. So I can see students not being upfront at admittance or even afterward . It is hard as an adult to admit that I have these extra things I have to accomodate. For a new adult who wants to fit in, I can see them hiding things cause if you don't think about it, you don't have to deal with it.
We didn't really check out the facilities at bigger schools she was applying to, and frankly while we did check out the support for learning differences we didn't really check out the health clinic. It seems to radically vary in effectiveness. She had very good care from her psychiatric nurse practioner but then she was misdiagnosed as having a cold when she had mono.
I feel we are still a Puritanical society in that we feel that mental health issues are the patients "fault". A few years ago when the SSRIs first came out, it was great cause they have fewer side effects than the tricyclics. But then all these articles in newspapers and magazines about "happy" pills, that made it sound like all you have to do was pop a pill and your problems would disappear.
That is really unfair. People who are diabetic take medicine and still have to manage their illness but they aren't looked at as taking the "easy way out". If you have something physical wrong, most people will go to a dr. but with mental issues even though they are just as real, we ( I ) feel like we just aren't trying hard enough.</p>
<p>Culturally some students may even be less likely to seek help than American born students and that is something that needs to be addressed as well</p>
<p>The fact of the matter is that there are way too many kids attempting suicide at college. Though most of the students are legally adults, there is a residual responsibility attached to the schools, not to mention the adverse publicity about the suicides. I know that NYU has been scratched from several kids' lists because the parents are afraid of the number of suicides that have made the press recently. Though the schools are not really interested in dealing with mental health issues beyond making a clinic available for those kids who seek help, the situation has forced them to take some action. The Shin suit in particular has brought this issue to the forefront. But anyone who has dealt with mental health issues well knows that it is a very tricky endeavor to try to help someone who is bipolar or has any other severe neuroses much less psychoses. Many of these kids who end up attempting suicide, and some succeeding have had a history of mental health issues that the family has kept covered up for fear it would affect college acceptances. And,yes, it can. Who wants to deal with a kid that is known to be high risk that way, when you know you will be getting a number of such kids? The schools' response to try to screen them and then force them out and into therapy if they are found to have issues is really to protect them from having those kids attempting suicide at school. I really did not sympathise with the bipolar student featured in the article. There really is no way I would want to have to monitor such a person who is not taking meds and has had an incident. As for kids not reporting such maladies, it already is an issue. And classmates do tend to be hesitant about reporting aberrant behaviour because of possible consequences. But when someone acts suicidal, I think a line has been crossed, and such a student needs to take a term off to reassess his mental health and his aberrant actions. A college is simply not set up to monitor someone in that situation. And the parents should be terribly concerned. Having read the Shin account, I feel that in that case, the parents had plenty of indications that their daughter was mentally ill, and find it hard to believe that they did not remove their daughter and get some help several times over. </p>
<p>I know a situation right now where a very bright, very qualified young lady is applying to top colleges. She has eating disorders and has been treated several times for them in the time I have known her. Should she be let loose at a top school? What should the parents do about monitoring her? They have had problems doing this even with her at home. How on earth is a college going to be able to monitor her when her family who is very solicitous cannot?</p>
<p>I have known families who have dealt with the problem head on, kept a gifted young student home until she/he was well on track with the issues. I have also known too many kids who ended up home after a risky episode. It may come to the point where colleges request information about mental health on the application.</p>
<p>jhsu,
actually, the last time I suggest that my son take a day off, he refused because it would just put him behind in classes. With a lot of our kids, they don't want to take the easier classes. It's tough fitting everything in, and getting everything done. I don't have to force my son to go to school, but I do sometimes suggest that he doen't completely over-extend himself.</p>
<p>ohiomom, just tell your son that he's not under an obligation to be such a top student. It's not like the world will end if he cuts out the hardest AP class or two. If being ranked at the top of the class were THAT important a prerequisite for accomplishing anything in life, the human race wouldn't have even invented fire, much less send space probes to the outer solar system.</p>
<p>The whole picture of therapy for kids with any mental illness is seriously impacted by the dearth of mental health professionals for kids and adolescents in the US. Some of the tendancy to try medication as a first resort reflectes a reality that it can take months to get into see a therapist in some places, and that insurance companies often place significant limits on reimbursement for mental health services. Given their druthers, most mental health professionals would definitely prefer combined therapies when medication is being used, but it is sometimes not feasible. A new complication is the "black box" warning that has been placed on the SSRI type medications (prozac etc) pertaining to their use for adolescents and kids. This issue is being hotly debated in professional circles because people feel their hands are completely tied.</p>
<p>The peak age of onset for first episodes of major depression is 15-24 (with another for middle age). Kids in college are in this age bracket and area vulnerable- as are kids in HS. Major depression is often a recurring life event. The first step in working on/with/through depression is psychoeducation- helping families and patients understand what depression is about so that the stigma or misunderstandings are reduced. There are huge barriers to this (not only those above) including cultural differences in the understanding of human differences. </p>
<p>Colleges and parents and insurance companies and...all have to take on the challenge. Parents sending kids off to college are fortunate when, as my son's school did, the colleges send out material in the summer which prompts discussions about mental health in a proactive manner. I mean, we talked about everything else (!), surely we were going to talk about this!</p>
<p>my kids have mental health days too. I mean IMO if you don't take time to take a break your body will make you by getting sick, so you might as well be proactive about it and enjoy your day off instead of spending it sweating on the couch.
My oldest often did not want to take a day off cause she was worried about getting behind in school. Even when her school gave her a week for college visits jr and senior year she didn't take one day. However when she was getting stressed I noticed before she did and I would suggest taking a day off, she would plan it for the best time and we would have a nice time together.
everybody needs a break, most of the time these students do quite well with their mulitiple obligations but I think because most of their time is dictated by others that is more stressful than if they were deciding their priorities. Sometimes teachers act like their class is the only one and assign heavy reports without checking with other teachers to see what else is due. It doesn't matter if you are in AP classes or not, you still need a break.</p>
<p>Thanks for the link to article, Marite. I think its interesting that this student took herself off her meds within first 3 weeks of college. She had not yet faced pressure of midterms or papers yet, and one has to wonder if she could successfully have navigated the additional stresses.
I've met many college students who should never have gone far from home for college, because they come with unresolved eating disorders, self-mutilation, Alc/drug problems. The college life style--staying up late, relying on coffee, eating improperly--exacerbates underlying tendencies for depr, bipolar, and Sz.
I wish students who worry about roommates would confide in their RAs, and the RAs would be trained to recognize symptoms and to push for an evaluation by a professional. Of course, there would be a few 'false positives'. Similarly, professors reading papers that suggest very real personal problems could speak directly to the student.
Its idealistic to think that the news focus on mental illness and suicide, death by Alc, will make everyone more sensitive, but one can hope.
And yes, i too am a strong believer in mental health days. Sometimes it meant going to school late or leaving early</p>
<p>When my daughter was stressed last spring and then her cat died, i was worried about when to tell her. I contacted her RAs and a friend by email so that they knew what was going on and to suggest to me a good time.
She talked to her RA quite a bit anyway as she was a friend but it was nice to know that I could check in with them as well.</p>
<p>my mother was pretty generous about "mental health days" (we didn't call it that) when I was in high school, and it was the only thing that made school bearable. That was back in the days before stringent limits on absences, so I did it a LOT. I would have been a natural homeschooler if anyone had ever heard of such a thing back then. I used to get much more accomplished on those days I stayed home than I ever did at school.</p>
<p>Normally, I wouldn't feel it was my place to post such things. But, in light of the fact that we (the parents) have been expressing concerns on this topic I am sad to say that we've been told that a freshman from this area attempted suicide yesterday at Bowdoin. She was a student at GFS and the speaker at last year's graduation. Because the school is so small, and this student was so much loved, word is that the current students are taking it very hard...especially the seniors. In addition, another student (a junior) at another Quaker school (AFS) just a few miles away was killed this weekend in a car accident (two other students were severely injured). Most of the students at each school would have known or been friends with the students at the other school. </p>
<p>Things are not going well for upper-school students at the Quaker schools in Philly right now. Please keep them in your prayers.</p>