<p>I read somewhere that impulsive suicides are usually far more “successful” than those that are premeditated. So… for the kid that failed his third midterm whose parents are breaking their backs to send them to college, that final blow might just be enough to push them over the edge in that moment. And face it… it can sometimes only take a momentary decision to chose to live or not.</p>
<p>As perplexing as 3 suicides in a short period are, the MOST perplexing thing is that they were all done in the same manner (jumping into gorges). </p>
<p>The article I provided a link to in post #44 mentioned something about being in awe of nature and feeling sort of insignificant in the presence of nature’s beauty and power.</p>
<p>Back in my Navy days, I spent hundreds of hours looking down at the shimmering waters of the Mediterranean from reconnaissance planes. It was hypnotic, and I had a mysterious and continual urge to jump out of the planes and be enveloped by the gorgeous scene below (and I’m hardly a nature lover, and am afraid of heights).</p>
<p>Actually Shmaltz that part is not perplexing, it’s the method of choice there, it is famous. In my day we called it “gorging out”. Everyone there knows about it. Though the aggregate #s that did it were not above national norms, it is still a well-known thing that occasionally happened there, unfortunately. If you saw the bridges and the gorges, together with the long-standing lore about it, it might be less perplexing to you.</p>
<p>If someone was there, and was thinking about offing themselves, the gorges would be the first thing that came to their mind, without doubt. It is easy to do, requires no preparation or materials, and has proven over the years to be 100% “successful”.</p>
<p>hey, i just wanted to add that as a government major in the college of arts and sciences at cornell, i have had only wonderful, intimate, enriching experiences with my professors. they always seemed to reach out to me (and in the past i was rather timid), on both intellectual/academic and personal levels. and because i found the course work at cornell far more stimulating and invigorating than the work at my admittedly excellent and well-known college prep school, i did even better, grade-wise, at cornell than in high school - and enjoyed myself more! i entered cornell with a history of depression and an eating disorder, and while no place is perfect and no place can “cure” you of a mental illness, i have been happier as a student/scholar (an integral component of my identity, similar to a suggestion made about cornell students several pages ago) while at cornell.</p>
<p>remember that mental illness runs deep, and those boys came in with underlying issues.</p>
<p>obviously i’m only an anecdote, and insignificant statistically, but i did just want to toss my experience into the mix.</p>
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<p>Research shows there is social influence with suicide so clusters are not unusual: knowledge of one can be trigger for others on the verge who are similar, in close proximity, or that have access to the same means. Not only as an option but the means as well.</p>
<p>It is one reason the media (used to at least) think twice about publicizing suicides. When famous people complete suicide it also has an temporary and unfortunate impact on subsequent suicides.</p>
<p>Apparently, the gorge suicides are not 100% “successful”. A co-worker of mine knows a former student who tried and failed, making himself an invalid for several years thereafter.</p>
<p>Cornell, the University of Chicago, and MIT have developed the reputation as gray, rigorous suicide mills.
If there were decent data on this, I’m guessing the suspicion would hold up.<br>
I know the U of C very well. I’ve also read the student papers for several years at Dartmouth and Princeton, where my kids have gone. Suicides reported there have happened off campus, most often quite some time after the student, at the school’s insistence I’m sure, has been separated from the school. I have no doubt that Dartmouth and Princeton, as liberal arts colleges on steroids, are better at identifying “at risk” kids than urban schools, and the relatively large Cornell.
What I don’t know is whether identifying depressed kids and removing them from campus has any impact on their eventual fate. My guess is that it doesn’t.</p>
<p>Suicide takes the lives of more college-age students than anything except car accidents</p>
<p>That’s actually not true. For the 15-24 year old age bracket, car accidents cause the most deaths, but all other accidents is second and homicide is third. Suicide is after those causes.</p>
<p>I haven’t seen it broken down for just 18-22 year olds anywhere, though.</p>
<p>Technically true, but one must factor in that students are typically safer at college than elsewhere; murders along the lines of Eve Carson and Annie Le are unusual.</p>
<p>Homicide is the second leading cause of death among college-age youth. However,
risk for homicide is much lower among college students compared to the general
population of similar age. To date, no studies of death among college students allow a
comparison between homicide and suicide as causes, yet many people concerned about
suicide prevention believe that suicide is likely the second leading cause of death, with
an estimated 1,088 suicides occurring on campuses each year (National Mental Health
Association [NMHA] & The Jed Foundation [JED], 2002).</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.sprc.org/library/college_sp_whitepaper.pdf[/url]”>http://www.sprc.org/library/college_sp_whitepaper.pdf</a></p>
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There is decent data and it refutes the reputation you know … Cornell and MIT have suicide rates the same or lower than other similar elite schools (do not know about UofC but I’d be surprised if it was substantially worse … or if Princeton or Dartmouth were substantially better).</p>
<p>Given all the angst about sending students to Cornell … I wonder what the response would have been if I had posted about a month ago that Cornell was a mecca for avoiding suicides since there had not been one for over 2 1/2 years where statistically you’d expect about 5 in that time?</p>
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<p>An article in one of the posted news links in this thread stated that MIT’s suicide rate is about one per school year, which is the same as at many other colleges and universities. One or two well-publicized suicides are certainly tragic, but they hardly make it a “suicide mill.”</p>
<p>Some of the more recent news articles have been saying there were actually 6 student suicides within the past year.</p>
<p>[College</a> on edge after recent wave of student suicides - CNN.com](<a href=“http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/03/18/cornell.suicides/]College”>College on edge after recent wave of student suicides - CNN.com)</p>
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<p>Technically, Cornell still comes in at below average in terms of suicide rate. Does any school out there actually exceed the average??</p>
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<p>That’s an interesting question. Suicides occur at a (thankfully) very low rate … finding a school with a statistically significant higher suicide rate probably would be highly unlikely … given a belief that the biggest driver of the suicides are issues the students have and not anything fundamental about any one school. Some schools might look better if they have gone a few years without a suicide … but even that would probably be more function of the low rate than a statistical signifigant difference.</p>
<p>What might be more interesting if the data was available would be doing an analysis on groups of schools which might have enough occurances to yield statistical differences. What about research schools versus LAC? Or big schools versus small ones? Or elite schools versus non-elite schools?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I don’t think I have heard of a student suicide at Chicago in the five years my kids have been there. I could have missed it, but student deaths for any reason are pretty big news. There was a suicide by a recent graduate a couple years ago, and THAT was big news, but none of the student deaths I remember reading about was a suicide. I have no idea why Chicago would be on any list of “suicide mills”. If there were anything to that, they would have a whole bunch of sardonic t-shirts about it.</p></li>
<li><p>I am upset about Temple getting booted out of the NCAA tournament, but it’s nice that people at Cornell have something to cheer about this week.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Caltech has unfortunately been hit with a cluster. There were three student suicides within a few months, then a professor did himself in. It seems like 1 - 2 per year has been typical for the last few years, which is far too many in a small school.</p>
<p>My son is currently an engineering grad student @ Cornell. I’ve spoken with him quite a bit this week & needless to say, the mood is very somber. Fortunately, next week is spring break and hopefully, the students and staff can make this a time of healing.</p>
<p>Suicides in college are often hushed up and never publicized because the family asks for privacy - so it’s not worth talking about suicide rates here and there when we simply don’t know how many. I go to NYU and we’ve had a couple well known suicides in the library (2 months ago a student somehow made it over the plexiglass barriers) but if it’s a quiet death in the dorm, then few people know of it except for those who knew the deceased person. A professor recently committed suicide here and that was well-known too. I think NYU has gotten a rep for high number of suicides as well, but because many of them are public. </p>
<p>According to the NIMH, these are the average number of suicides per age group:
Children ages 10 to 14 — 1.3 per 100,000
Adolescents ages 15 to 19 — 8.2 per 100,000
Young adults ages 20 to 24 — 12.5 per 100,000</p>
<p>Cornell is a fairly big college, right? I doubt 3 per year is above average. Unfortunately, when you go to a large university, it’s to be expected that there will be several deaths per year.</p>
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About 13,000 undergrads … so average would be more like 1-1.5 per year … so 3 is high but not unusual just as the years with none were not unusual.</p>
<p>Haverford is tiny … I think about 1000 kids … so if Haverford has one suicide every 10 years or so it’s rate is the same as Cornell’s … however the perception of the “problem” would probably be much different.</p>
<p>As an alum who was at Cornell for one of the suicide clusters I’m pretty mych convinced Cornell gets a bum rap about suicide because of the gorges … the suicides are so public to the Cornell Community and newsworthy to the outside world.</p>
<p>Schools do not Cause suicides, though kids this age do get a kind of contageon and I think it is really good for schools to be aware of the fact that where one suicide happens, they need to get ON IT immediately. This is why covering up suicides and not getting it out in the open for the entire community to talk about openly, including the fact that people need to be aware if thier roommate or friend seems … Just, keep an extra eye for the year.</p>
<p>But I really don’t like the implication that certain schools CAUSE suicide. It can happen anywhere. So, so sad for these families and for the friends of these kids, as well.</p>