<p>People may have a predisposition for certain diseases based on genetic makeup, but environmental influences can cause them to manifest. It’s similar to the two-hit hypothesis in cancer–for normal people, you may need two environmental “hits” to develop cancer. For someone with a bad gene, you may need only one. The central idea is that people have a threshhold to make a decision, and certain environmental factors may push you toward that threshhold.</p>
<p>Personally, I know I am more relaxed in an enviroment with more trees. I don’t think I’m the only one…</p>
<p>I got the feeling that this’s a rare and very unique case. Discussions here might have little to do with what happened. We’ll see. By the way, of all schools that I (not a student) visited, MIT left the best impression, caring is part of it.</p>
<p>collegealumn314 - I certainly believe the green space and the environment help people mind. However, it does not help to explain the case of Caltech. Caltech does have beautiful, tranquil, and relaxing settings. However, like MIT Caltech did have sad news recently. On the other hand, I also think the Killian court at MIT and the scene along Memorial Drive are quite beautiful and refreshing. Perhaps students did not take advantage of them often?</p>
<p>I’m not sure if this is directed at my post, but that’s not what I meant at all. I don’t think singles cause suicides - I’m just suggesting that bodies would probably be found within a day on average rather than a week later. I personally love having singles and see no reason to get rid of them.</p>
<p>re: green things - I personally love green things and nature overall. I spend a lot of my time on campus in Killian Court, and will often walk along the river on the pretty green trails in Boston. I like hanging out on the lawn in front of the student center and watching people play frisbee, or doing the same on the Dot. MIT’s not middle-of-nowhere rolling green pastures, but it’s not hard to take advantage of the green and beauty we have.</p>
<p>^Oh, no – not directed at either you or lidusha, or anybody specific, really. I was discussing this IRL today with some co-workers, and that was their impression.</p>
<p>I think that while green spaces might help if you’re in the mood to say “I want to take a break”. But I know from experience that if you’re stressed out or worried about something, you don’t care about your surroundings as much.</p>
<p>Piper, how many people do you know well enough that they would tell you if they were crying in their room at night?</p>
<p>I don’t know many. Harvard and MIT have a culture that is not accepting of “weakness” and it makes it hard for people to open up. (Harvard had a long discussion of this when the Crimson ran an anonymous op-ed and had a lot of anonymous comments about it. ([I</a> Am Fine | FM | The Harvard Crimson](<a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/2/17/harvard-many-feel-out/]I”>The Harvard Crimson))</p>
<p>If it doesn’t seem like that many people you know have eating disorders, cry in their rooms, contemplate suicide, go to mental health, etc. isn’t it possible it’s because they just don’t tell you? Consider the number of people you know who are going to medical for mental illness. Is it 15% of the people you know ([MIT</a> Medical : Mental Health - Student Questions](<a href=“MIT Medical”>Student Mental Health & Counseling Services | MIT Medical)) If it isn’t at least that many then it’s because they are hiding their illness from you–and we know (there are surveys and this seems obvious) a lot more people are hiding their illness from medical, both because of pride and because of fear MIT will kick them out (MIT’s post-Elizabeth Shin policy Mollie alluded to).</p>
<p>The only people I feel like I’d know if they have serious problems or not a la not eating are a subset of the people on my floor (<20 people) and of them, when I graduated, I know at least 15% had eating disorders. More were depressed or borderline. Is that normal? I don’t know, young people in colleges have high rates of depression nation-wide so maybe not. But when the motto of a place is IHTFP and no even cares enough to survey whether it’s a problem until someone (Shin’s parents) sues for millions, you get the sense that it is and always has been a negative outlier in happiness, partly for lack of effort.</p>
<p>@stevewh: I think my problem with what you are saying might be that we’re focusing too much attention on MIT. Truth be told, MIT is much larger than many of these tiny, tightly knit universities out there, and I don’t think there is a universal culture, although I could be wrong. </p>
<p>I come from somewhere that has a somewhat similar reputation on this count - a lot of people say they leave with lots of mental health issues, but a lot of other people just love the environment. There are hypercompetitive people, but there are also tons of tree-hugging people with the least interest in being competitive. <em>Yet</em> those who experience mental issues still tend to cast a bad name on the environment.</p>
<p>I really think it is essential for the individual to be aware of his/her mental health. Sure, certain people naturally develop problematic tendencies (for instance, some people are absentminded, and may accidentally drop something heavy they are carrying on their foot). The key is being aware of them enough that they don’t lead to much irreparable damage. </p>
<p>I agree the one week thing is quite disturbing generally, but I don’t think it is something wrong with the entire environment (in fact, I don’t see what that would even mean). </p>
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<p>That isn’t always a bad thing, although I’m not sure it is true on some universal scale. Again, the individual needs to make a decision about these things. For some people, conceivably the environment where weakness is discouraged simply enables them to reach their best. Not everyone thrives in this environment, though - some would rather the opposite scenario (where, if they feel they can betray some weakness, they are secure enough to perform really well, and may never even display much weakness in the end).</p>
<p>I agree heartily that there is a problem when students feel they need to hide from getting help. It’s a real, real, real problem. I’m not sure if it applies to MIT.</p>
<p>Still, there is really little doubt in my mind that the individual’s vigilance carries weight which cannot be overstated.</p>
<p>I agree with this a lot, and also with collegealum that it can be triggered by certain environments. Again, this isn’t the problem with the environment necessarily, but certainly with the individual’s not being suited to it. </p>
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<p>In fact, not having one at my own school perhaps ruined a huge part of my first year.</p>
<p>Mollie and I went to two different MIT’s. The suicides, almost of all of which were public, were part of my undergraduate experience–it’s not a myth. On the other hand, Mollie was lucky to go there during a downturn in what seems like a cycle. Personally, I have a hard time believing all those people would have done the same thing somewhere else. There may be a copycat factor at work here which exacerbated it, but I think there is something intrinsic.</p>
<p>Concerning Harvard, a Harvard friend of mine told me the suicides there were generally of grad students who were foreign (and may have had assimilation issues, homesickness, etc.). It didn’t seem to me the same thing.</p>
<p>I know quite a number of people who have gone to MIT mental health, and a few who have been suicidal. I’ve stayed up with friends who have cried in their room all night.</p>
<p>I seem a bit more adept then most people at encouraging heart-to-heart conversations, but I disagree with your assessment that MIT isn’t a place where you can show any sort of weakness. If you’re a current student, then maybe you’re just with the wrong crowd or need to learn how to get close to people.</p>
<p>I’m not aware of any stats on MIT’s suicide rate being above normal for the age group in older times – but assuming it was, what do you think was the cause? Suicides tend to be for reasons like family or friend troubles and loneliness, not stress over work.</p>
<p>Jumping back to stevewh’s post - I really don’t see how the Harvard article applies to MIT, but it has convinced me that they are not nearly as alike as you suggest. While as I said before maybe getting personal with someone is difficult, I very strongly see the “IHTFP” mentality and people will very openly ***** about the workloads/activity loads they choose. I don’t see any pressure to, say, not complain because there are so many possibilities – as the Harvard article suggests is the case at Harvard.</p>
Well, either that, or you were unlucky to go there during an upturn. </p>
<p>Re: Harvard, the undergrad in my lab was very specific about there having been an undergraduate suicide every year she’s been at Harvard (she’s a senior). The grad student suicide rate at both MIT and Harvard is, as far as I know, fairly high, but goes mostly without notice or public comment, perhaps because the graduate student experience is less unitary, so it’s less easy to blame the schools. (And I don’t mean to point fingers at MIT and Harvard, either, just because those are the schools I know about about which I’ve heard the most stories. There’s no reason to believe grad student suicide rates are different at other top science programs.)</p>
<p>The first is that mollie is right. The narrative framing is everything (as I discussed in my data post). There are different schools that have different reputations that they need to rebut or enhance. I was joking with a colleague from a prestigious liberal arts school with no core requirements. He said that when our two schools market, “MIT has to take about how fun they are, and my university has to talk about how rigorous it is.” And it’s true. The frame from which you enter the conversation determines how you interpret the data. </p>
<p>For comparison, the school I went to my freshman year of college is smaller than MIT, has a reputation for being a difficult school, had big beautiful green spaces, and had four suicides (and four rapes) during that year; there was nary a peep about it beyond the student newspapers. But that school had no reputation for that sort of thing, so the data didn’t cohere into a trend in the public imagination. That’s just one example, but it’s a powerful one. </p>
<p>That said, MIT isn’t perfect either. MIT is a tough place. It’s tough in the workload. And it can be tough in the culture. I always tell applicants that if you want to laze around for four years of college MIT is not the place for you. But beyond that there is certainly a subset of the MIT community that thrives on working harder than anyone else, on pulling more all nighters than anyone else, and so forth. And if you’re not a part of that subset but you try to live up to it, or you feel like you have to, MIT can be tough. And if there are underlying mental health factors, plus some family issues, and a whole bunch of other things, then it can become a dangerous situation. </p>
<p>mollie’s right that this can happen at any environment and at any school. And I don’t think that it’s MIT’s architecture or space really at all. </p>
<p>But I do think it’s also important for MIT to be reflective of what, if anything, it can change to minimize these tragedies. “Minimize” isn’t big enough of a word to really evoke what I mean. I’d say “prevent”, but the sad truth is - and I say this at someone who has been involved in residence life at three very different institutions - you can never “prevent” these things. You can just take every precaution you can, set up every safety net you can, try to help and to heal as you can, and then rest, if not comforted by, resigned to the knowledge that you have done everything you can. I do think that MIT has done this, and I think that it will now renew and redouble its efforts.</p>
<p>I am not involved with these decisions. They are way, way above my paygrade (thank goodness). But I do think that there is a time for everyone - staff, students, and faculty - to reflect and to ask ourselves: what more, if anything, can we do? And I do think that this is going on right now. I don’t know what, if any, changes there will be, because we still don’t know very much, and it’s foolish to make decisions for PR reasons if you’re not going to actually help anything. </p>
<p>I’ll close with a note that Chancellor Eric Grimson sent out to all MIT students last week, because I think it really says what needs to be said to students, which is more important, in some ways, at this moment, than what needs to be done: </p>
<p>Mollie, the suicide rate at H has been much lower than the national average, while MIT’s is higher. But I do agree that when it happens at MIT it seems to receive so much more negative attention and public comment. The endless publicity to these rather rare incidents just encourage copycat behavior.</p>
<p>Why continue to debate on death and who’s responsible? It’s tragic that someone so talented left us, but rather than dwelling on it, isn’t it so much more productive and meaningful to remember him by going out of your room right now to say hi to your neighbors, to someone you haven’t talked to in a while, to let them know that they’re in your heart and thoughts.</p>
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<p>The Harvard Student Mental Health Liaison has been experimenting with depression screenings in residential dining halls, and those had good participation levels. It’s also helpful to advocate seeing mental health issues as medical conditions deserving of attention rather than any sort of emotional weakness as it is perceived traditionally. Inviting speakers to campus to talk about their own mental health conditions can also be something to try.</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone can blame MIT for the suicide this year that occurred before the semester even began, and we don’t know yet what happened in this latest incident. But they are both tragic deaths and it makes us all wonder how MIT could be a healthier place.</p>
<p>I would suggest that one unhealthy thing about MIT culture is equating staying up all night and “working hard.” It is simply poor planning. Any work done in the middle of the night can be done twice as fast and far more accurately during the day. All nighters are not an ideal to live up to. They compromise your health and your judgement. Plenty of students (even MIT students) go through college getting regular sleep, and do as well or better than those with erratic personal schedules.</p>
<p>i absolutely agree with you. i’ve had a lot of discussions about this. i’m an academic advisor, and i told both of my advisees this year that they should resist the temptation to go out and join any clubs until they’ve gotten through the first set of exams. the reason is that the most important thing you can do at MIT is learn to manage your time first, then extend outwards second. </p>
<p>it’s really tough! most students (like me) really love being involved. it’s a hard rule to follow. but there is no reason to make MIT more difficult than it is. </p>
<p>i do think that specific subset of culture - “work = staying up all night” is on a downward trend. mollie, like most of our bloggers, is adamant about time management, not pulling all nighters just to do so, and so forth. like i said, i think it’s a subset of students who are perceived to dominate the culture more than they do actually. </p>
<p>ultimately, everyone involved wants MIT to be as healthy a place as possible. and if anyone has good specific suggestions, i’m happy to pass them up the chain.</p>
Are there numbers for grad students somewhere? I didn’t think I had seen them – most stats I’ve ever seen have been for undergraduates alone. Thinking anecdotally, I know of several cases of MIT and Harvard grad students committing suicide within the last five years.</p>
<p>At any rate, I think it’s difficult statistically to say, based on a few years of numbers, whether School X has a suicide rate higher or lower than would be expected. Suicides are such rare events anywhere that a single case can really skew the numbers. By and large, I imagine most universities have suicide rates whose differences from normal are not statistically significant, and that the error bars on those rates are very large.</p>
[Study:</a> suicide rate at MIT is higher than at other schools - News: noteworthy people, programs, funding, and technological advances in the world of higher education - Brief Article | Matrix: The Magazine for Leaders in Education | Find Articles](<a href=“http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HJE/is_2_2/ai_79961273/]Study:”>http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HJE/is_2_2/ai_79961273/)
There was an article in the Boston Globe which the above article refers to. Mollie has actually written a rebuttal to the Globe article contending they made statistical mistakes. However, she has made mistakes of her own. For one, she compares MIT’s suicide rate for the national average for the same age demographic (although the linked article claims MIT’s suicide rate is almost twice that of the national average and 3 times the suicide rate at the average college.) Just looking at the same age demographic includes people on welfare and who have other poverty-associated problems. Also, MIT was around 53/47 male/female from 1995-2001, not overwhelmingly male. I don’t think 1990-1994 was that different.</p>
<p>I’m not sure about her contention that suicides are associated with technical majors and that may skew the statistics. However, if you look at engineering department alone at a big school, for example U. of Michigan (~5500 undergrad students,) I doubt they ever had near the number of undergraduate suicides. I know a lot of people who majored in technical areas at state schools–I never heard of anything like what I saw at MIT.</p>