<p>Yesterday, a friend told me they had eliminated from their college list a very good match school for their daughter based solely on its suicide rate. Do this statistic matter to you, either emotionally or intellectually? More specifically, do you think it has any bearing on your own child's propensity or lack thereof to commit suicide?</p>
<p>Secondly, how accurate do you think these statistics are? I ask because when I commented on the aforementioned conversation to another friend, she told me her D and a couple of companions saw a boy jump off a balcony at college. They all agree he jumped, as opposed to fell accidentally. The school in question made all the witnesses sign a paper agreeing to not talk about the incident with anyone or they would be expelled. The kids were told that none of them had all the facts, and would be held liable if they spread "rumors." The fall was labeled an accident. Similarly, at my kid's school when there was an attempted suicide, those in the know were asked by college officials not to speak about it to anyone. So I guess universities often hush these things up and therefore the statistics may not even be accurate. Of course I realize they aren't always keeping it under wraps for their own benefit, but to protect others who are involved. Still, if a suicide can successfully be portrayed as an accident, then it won't be included in the statistics. My guess is this happens more often with attempted suicides, which wouldn't make the stats anyway.</p>
<p>It’s the same for crimes on campus. Drinking on campus. Rapes. Depression. It’s all part of life, sadly, and if this people uses suicide as a criteria, what about all the other issues. No suicide would not be something I based my decision on, how they handle it would be. </p>
<p>As for the student who had to sign the paper, wow…</p>
<p>A young man apparently committed suicide right before spring break, just this month at my son’s school. That the school paper reported this has gotten a lot of criticism from the family’s friends. My son says there is some talk of a suit. </p>
<p>I agree that suicides are underreported by colleges. Unless it is on campus, during the school year, at a school event, school may not report these things and parents may not as well, keeping things very vague. </p>
<p>But I always take second hand and further removed stories with a grain of salt. I do keep that salt shaker handy and it shakes a lot of salt sometime. Maybe it is true the college made the kids sign something, maybe not.</p>
<p>No, I do not care about the suicide rates at different colleges, because I think that the particular college a student is enrolled in has nothing to do with a student’s decision to take his/her own life. College suicides were seriously troubled long before they got to campus. I realize that it can be comforting for the family and friends of the deceased to believe otherwise.</p>
<p>If it was in fact a suicide, I don’t understand how there would be grounds for a suit. The school paper is supposed to disseminate news, and a student suicide is news.</p>
<p>Playing devil’s advocate a bit here, but why should that be news? Why does the entire campus need to know this? What business is it to anyone other than family and friends, who will know anyway? </p>
<p>To the OP, this would not factor into a college-choice decision here.</p>
You’re saying it’s not news? Isn’t that one of the points of the thread? Obviously it was important news for the OP’s friend since it removed that school from the list.</p>
<p>^^So are you saying it’s news because someone is interested in it? That could apply to a lot of things that aren’t reported in a newspaper. </p>
<p>What I am saying is that a lot of people (sadly) commit suicide, but it’s not reported in a newspaper. What makes it news then? Is it news because it occurs on or near a campus? Or is it news because the person is a student of some school? Is it news if a student commits suicide while at home on break? It feels voyeuristic to me.</p>
<p>There are also the attempts. Those are kept very private. In the school district next to us, there were 4 attempts in a short period of time. Not a word in the press. Not a word from the families or the school. So these statistics are elusive. Also for whatever reason when a Cornell or Harvard student commits suicide, it generally gets a lot more coverage than when a kid from a community college does the same.</p>
<p>I almost trust more the schools wIth higher stats, I think they are prob more honest in their reporting. Some schoolsmunder report lots of crimes, so it’s looks better. The NYC police did that. Rape was assault, etc.</p>
<p>One newspaper may choose to report it while another does not. The point was, how does truthfully reporting an event that occurred on campus by the campus newspaper set one up for a lawsuit? This is not protected information.</p>
<p>If a student is killed in a car accident, it is reported. If a student jumps off a building, I would imagine that would be reported as well. You don’t hear of families of kids who died in car wrecks threatening a lawsuit for reporting that. To say the newspaper should be sued for reporting the kid who jumped off the building just reinforces the stigma of suicide, that it is something the family should be ashamed of and will use legal measures to keep secret.</p>
<p>It never occurred to me to look at this. At most colleges/universities, other than the largest publics, it’s hard to believe there is a big enough population to get a reliable suicide rate over any reasonably current period (say, 5 years). And even if the rate is kinda sorta valid, I doubt it will mean much risk for any particular student unless that student has some existing risk factors.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if there is a big, sustained difference between comparable schools, at the very least one might wonder whether it’s depressing to go to a college where you hear about classmates committing suicide more often than elsewhere.</p>
<p>That is really sobering. The other scary fact is, “The vast majority of 18-year-olds with depression have never been treated for it.”</p>
<p>Having two sons with mental health issues, I tell parents to BE ON THE LOOKOUT!! My oldest, in particular, never gave us ANY reason to suspect he would fall ill when he went off to college. I never thought I would hear doctors use the word “suicidal” with regard to my kids! It is SO frightening. Make sure your kids know how to get hold of the student health center, and that counseling IS available. You have to look, but there are excellent psychiatrists for adolescents, also. My kids are doing well now, but I think this will be a lifetime challenge for them. It is much more common than you would ever guess.</p>
<p>Having known a person or two that attempted suicide while in college, I’m not sure if I’d agree they were necessarily troubled before attending college. I don’t believe in was, in their case, the particular colleges they attended which caused the problems, but the general issues that came up as part of going away to college that lead to the attempts.</p>
<p>My son committed suicide at college 3 years ago with no warning over a break-up with his girlfriend. Until the fatal moment he jumped from the top floor of his dorm he was the picture of the noramlly adjusted young man. Since then I have learned a tremendous amount about a subject I never thought I have to learn about. Colleges vary greatly in how they deal with suicide. The very best have proactive programs that are actually mandatory where students are taught how to get help, how to watch our for the warning signs in their friends, ect. Some colleges are afraid the very mention of the suicide will hurt their image and are in denial of the issue. It varies greatly by college. The same I have found applies to the on-campus help centers. Some of the centers have counselors that are well trained in the subject yet some centers have no training or understanding at all. Every year ~ 1100 college students KILL THEMSELVES. It is so hard to believe but that is an average of 3 per day and it is true. As a parent take the time to make sure you learn all you can about suicide and also the schools programs before they attend is my advice. Not a day, not a hour, goes by that I do not regret I did not do this before he went off to school. He killed himself several days before his 21st birthday.</p>
<p>If there were a theory behind why a particular school had a higher than average rate of reported suicide, would it matter what the alleged reason was? For example, if it were alleged that the existence of skyscrapers and bridges near campus gave greater opportunity for this sort of tragedy, could you overlook the statistics more easily than if the suspected reason were that the school was a pressure-cooker with an intense workload? I remember when there was a CC thread on suicides at Cornell, and people kept mentioning the gorges as a possible reason for the higher rates. When my friend spoke with an admissions rep, the “reason” given to her was the isolation of campus–that it’s not easy to go somewhere else if you need a break from the place. That school was not elite by CC standards, but I wonder if it would have mattered if it were. Plenty of people obviously overlooked the Cornell statistics (and I’m not saying there wasn’t good reason to), so one wonders whether people would be more willing to rationalize that information away if it were a top school?</p>
<p>^^^^^My condolences on your loss. That’s every parent’s worst nightmare.</p>
<p>I have a close friend whose son began expressing suicidal inclinations in high school. It was a horrible period for the family. With treatment, he improved, but when he went off to college 2 years ago, they looked carefully at not the suicide rates at the school, but at their mental health support services. They found a school which had an impressive program to help students in need. He has been stressed out this semester, and while he is not suicidal, they made sure to get him connected with the counseling resources before he got overwhelmed, and last I heard, he was coping fairly well.</p>