Suicide rates: accurate or not, and do you care?

Parent Cafe
41

<p>Mallen, there are just no words to say how sorry I am.</p>

<p>I’m glad you are speaking about it openly. </p>

<p>I think we all want to find a “reason” for these things, and sometimes there is one, and sometimes there is not. It’s more frightening when there is no reason, becuase there is no way to be sure it can be prevented.</p>

<p>I think the parents on here discussing the availability of mental health services are onto something. Please be aware that most colleges offer emergency intervention services and then refer off-campus. </p>

<p>If any of you have students who suffer with mental illness, please consider keeping them closer to home for college. There is no substitute for being able to look into their eyes, as the person who knows them, to determine where they are at, psychologically, at any point in time. YMMV</p>

42

<p>Wow, I’m impressed:</p>

<p>[Chapman</a> University | Send Silence Packing: Raising Awareness of Student Suicide](<a href=“http://sendsilencepacking.org/10/03/chapman-university]Chapman”>http://sendsilencepacking.org/10/03/chapman-university)</p>

43

<p>I can by reading this thread is that there is a lot of misunderstanding about suicide at the college level. Just a couple points. Colleges almost always cover in orientation the risks of drugs, drinking and sometimes unprotected sex but they rarely even mention suicide or if they do they mumble. The FACT is more college students die from suicide each year than drugs and drinking combined. As I said before, some colleges are getting out in front of the problem and data shows these colleges have reduced their rate of suicide. As far as the comment that all college students that commit suicide had issues before they went to college this is a half truth. For people that have been diagnosed as manic depressive or bipolar there is a very high rate of suicide. It is a not certain destiny that all bipolar people commit suicide but the rates are clearly higher. This is true of college bound or not and a very tough road for parents with children that are bipolar. That said, about 20-30 % of college suicides are spontaneous and brought on by a tramatic trigger event, usually involving a romantic relationship. In these cases, there is little to no warning and no history of suicide attempts or depression. More often is the people who are considering suicide in these spontanteous cases are unable to help themselves and it is thier friends who are best able to see the issue and get help. The Coast Guard Academy after years of having a very high suicide rate started a mandatory program where each student is trained for he warning signs and taught to help thier classmates they suspect may be having trouble. This eliminated suicides for I think the next 5 years so programs do work.
We always worried about driving or drinking and driving as the biggest risk our son faced and suicide is not something that even ever crossed our minds. Learn all you can about suicide and also educate your children all that you can. If not for themselves, perhaps one day they might be in the postion to help save thier best friends life.</p>

44

<p>I don’t think that the suicide rate for a college should be a factor - there are so many variables at play here. If you have mental health issues in your family tree or our spouse’s family tree, or there is a known problem with your child, then you may want to stay in touch more with your child to get a read on whether or not they are having a problem.</p>

<p>It would be nice if teenagers recognized the signs of problems and could help each other out if they suspected something - whether that means telling someone or bringing them to the counseling center. Maybe some schools do that but it’s not something that I’ve read about.</p>

<p>I am aware of two co-workers that have committed suicide. One had Lou-Gehrig’s disease and his wife was undergoing cancer treatment and the financial and care side made the suicide seem rational (guy was brilliant and well-published and well-liked and it was a shock to us all; both that he was ill and that he committed suicide). The other one was someone that I knew and he was well-liked and close to some in the building. He suffered from depression and I guess that it was all too much for him. He was discovered by another co-worker. Another close co-worker has joked about going to “jump off a bridge” - he was pretty depressed so I spent more time with him as a friend and in making suggestions in his life. He is fine now.</p>

<p>I think that others paying attention would be helpful but I wouldn’t expect college students to have the skills to recognize problems - how do you know if someone is kidding or if they are serious? Even when there are people around you that are paying attention, it may not be enough.</p>

<p>EDIT: re: mallen1 - Coast Guard - that sounds like a good program. We have to take a lot of mandatory training videos at work and they have interactive tests. Maybe they should have these sorts of things at college covering a variety of areas. Costs should be cheap if amortized over a lot of colleges.</p>

45

<p>Mallen1, adding my condolences for your great loss. Thank you for passing along all you have learned to other parents.</p>

<p>Have we established yet how one determines what the suicide rate at any given school is? Even if schools openly report suicides, how then does one calculate the rate? I agree with those who have posted that parents many times can’t know when their children are at risk. Not only does mental illness often develop during late adolescence, but depressed people often hide their feelings, or the extent of those feelings, from loved ones. If the school’s policy is for seriously depressed or bipolar students to take a medical leave, some kids may try to deal with their feelings on their own rather than interrupt their schooling. I think requiring a leave makes sense, since a school is a school, not a mental health care facility. But an unhappy young person may well see it differently.</p>

46

<p>There were three suicides at my son’s school many years ago and I think that two or three jumped off a bridge connecting two of the campuses. They then put up a fence on the bridge making it a lot harder to jump. I haven’t heard of any suicides since then. But that could be due to a different population, better counseling resources, etc.</p>

<p>I’d guess that numbers would be pretty small for most schools with many schools having an average of low single digits or even below 1 per year.</p>

47

<p>I just googled “suicide rates at X college” (the school my friend’s D was interested in), and found the Daily Beast’s List of the most stressful colleges. The top 20 are:</p>

<ol>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Penn</li>
<li>Wash U ( that’s an odd one!)</li>
<li>Univ. of Chicago</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Vanderbilt</li>
<li>Northwestern</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Dartmouth</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>Cal Tech</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
<li>Brown</li>
<li>USC</li>
<li>Carnegie Mellon</li>
<li>Tufts</li>
</ol>

<p>The criteria are:
"• The cost: Financial pressure is a huge stress-inducer. Tuition plus room and board, weighted at 35 percent. With 2009-2010 data from the National Center on Education Statistics.</p>

<p>• Competitiveness: How academically rigorous is the school? Weighted at 35 percent, with 2010 data from US News & World Report.</p>

<p>• Acceptance rate: More competitive schools generally produce a more competitive student body. Weighted at 10 percent, with 2010 data from US News & World Report.</p>

<p>• Engineering: Is the school known for its particularly rigorous graduate engineering program? Weighted at 10 percent, with 2010 data from US News & World Report.</p>

<p>• Crime on campus: Adapted from The Daily Beast’s analysis of college crime, weighted at 10 percent and ranked relative to this particular group of colleges. With data from the US Department of Education."</p>

48

<p>mallen1, I’m so very sorry for your loss. I can’t imagine the pain. Thank you for coming here to speak up and provide valuable information.</p>

49

<p>I’d like to see a better source than The Daily Beast (for anything, not just this very important topic). And, of course, “most stressful” is a subjective category, while the suicide rate at a given school would be an objective statistic.</p>

<p>I think it’s vital to be aware of mental health resources at any school one’s kid is considering, as well as the kid’s own readiness to be on his or her own. I wouldn’t let any school’s mere reputation for a high suicide rate be a discouraging factor - I’d want to see actual numbers and consider the school’s actual response to each tragedy. Some schools have unearned reputations, for good or ill.</p>

50

<p>Mallen, I’m so sorry for your loss. We came close to losing our son. His doctor had devised a safety plan for him, though, and he used it - called her the second he realized he was in a downward spiral. As I said, we didn’t have any clue before college that he would have any problems. He was enthusiastic, bright, athletic, etc. He suffered some injuries due to long-term athletics and ended up on crutches his first semester of college (he had to live with my parents for awhile because it was too hard living on campus). We think that’s what triggered his break. His doctor worked almost exclusively with college students with severe mental issues - she said there were a lot of them. She also said his school had a high rate of suicide, and I don’t even see it on that list of 20.</p>

<p>And yes, 18-23 is the age that a lot of mental illness appears.</p>

<p>I’ve mentioned this on CC before, but if you have a family member who is ill, please look into NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness). They have an excellent FREE 12-week Family-to-Family education course that is like a college class in the amount of information you get. One of the many, many topics covered is suicide.</p>

51

<p>

</p>

<p>We the parents and schools need to help them pass this age range safely, emerging as more confident, not damaged.</p>

52

<p>Yes, there are tools you can teach people including students to help idendify people that are at risk of suicide and yes, the tools are not perfect but they do work many times I know for a fact. I believe if we can send our children to college to earn a college degree, we can expect they can learn some life saving skills for themselves and others. Colleges do not to my knowlege have a national data base of rates of suicide by college allthough I do have some statistics for several. I would offer that more important is teaching your children about the subject and risks, ect just as you did about drugs or drinkinng and driving.
About 2 years after my son died I wrote up a 7-8 page word document of what I had learned in the 1000’s of hours of reading and talking to parents and couselors trying to deal with the guilt of losing a son. I have given the file to less than 5 people as it is a very personal and dificult subject for me to deal with. With that said, if any of you want to send me a request and an email address, I will take some time Saturday and send it to you. </p>

<p>Hug you kids today is all I say.</p>

53

<p>One thing to keep in mind is that, like many other self-reported statistics, there are plenty of ways to massage data to make it look better for the school. As someone mentioned earlier in the thread, if it happens over a summer, off-campus, or while a student is on academic leave the school may not be reporting it in their statistics.</p>

54

<p>With the suicide rate of high school students also being high, it is not unlikely that our kids will be at a high school where there has been a suicide. There have been 2 at D’s school (of ~1600 students) in the 3 years she has been there.</p>

55

<p>My deepest condolences to Mallen1. How generous and difficult, but thanks for post #52, offering to share what you learned with others. </p>

<p>Excellent resource to learn more facts and become aware of research directions: American Association of Suicidology <a href=“http://www.suicidology.org%5B/url%5D”>www.suicidology.org</a></p>

<p>That homepage posts a national number (“hotline”) for anonymous call-ins 24/7. </p>

<p>1-800-273-“TALK” (-8255).</p>

<p>They can also link a caller to local help call-in Crisis Centers in most U.S. states. These centers, staffed by trained people, link with local resources available to the general community surrounding the college. Not all U.S. communities are covered, but you can check by state if your college falls in a covered area. Obviously, these local crisis centers are in addition, not instead of, a college’s own mental health counseling resources. </p>

<p>Your student might want to know about the national hotline, if only to call for guidance when their friend is in immediate distress, or for themselves. </p>

<p>Personally, I wouldn’t take a school off a list based on its suicide statistics unless I already knew my child had struggled with clinical depression, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. The rest of us are all in the same boat, of not knowing how resilient our children will be under the new stress of a residential college. </p>

<p>JHS’s observation that a statistic might hint at the fact that the particular college environment might be depressing would be one I’d check out, just by visits, to see if it should stay on a list or at least be forewarned that this place can be a downer. Even that observation wouldn’t eliminate a school from a list here. But we’d forewarn the student to be extra vigilant to use personal tools (whatever works for that student - exercise, meditation, laughter yoga, it doesn’t matter) to push back proactively against a depressing campus environment. It’s a factor. I hate depressing environments because I’m a very social animal who finds how other people feel very contagious to me. Someone else might be more inner-driven or have a singularity of personality in which the identical setting wouldn’t bring them down. </p>

<p>Re Post #42, Go Chapman! (S-2’s alma mater). Beautiful project. I’ll post the link again so you don’t have to search back: [Chapman</a> University | Send Silence Packing: Raising Awareness of Student Suicide](<a href=“http://sendsilencepacking.org/10/03/chapman-university]Chapman”>http://sendsilencepacking.org/10/03/chapman-university)</p>

56

<p>I am grateful for your posting Mallen. I would add, in regards to bipolar disorder, that estimates are that 1 in 6 commit suicide. That is very high, more fatal than many people realize. But most bipolar is diagnosed in the late teens, early twenties. So kids leaving for college now <em>might</em> be entering college with their own issues , but maybe not. If your child develops bipolar disorder while away at college, one hopes for a campus which notices the behavior, has good support, has reasonable accommodations for absences, and an atmosphere where it’s ok to be “out” with a mental illness.</p>

57

<p>Re: break up of a romantic relationship being so high on the list of reasons for student suicides – I have seen some kids truly devastated over a break up. Since most kids eventually go through that, the job is to somehow convince them that there will be someone else later, that they will get over the lost love. But how do you know your kid has absorbed/believes that message?</p>

58

<p>4yorkshiremen, that statistic is so scary. My younger son has a 15% chance. 15%!!! That keeps me awake at night. He’s a HS junior now. Very bright, but having to relearn how to use his brains because of the meds. I don’t know what’s going to happen after he graduates.</p>

59

<p>Many of our young adults go off to college without ever having had to deal with a great personal loss such as the breakup of a romantic relationshp. as parents we have not had the opportunity to coach them thru difficult times.</p>

<p>We know that kids this age are impulsive. </p>

<p>We also know that they have only lived for 20 years so that upsetting life events seem much larger than they do in middle age. They feel their emotions much more than an older adult because their life experience is so much less.</p>

<p>We also know kids are drinking alcohol whenever they want and often binge drink.</p>

<p>We know college life can be isolating as students are very egocentric and really do not see others hurting as they are too involved with their own emotions. They give each other too much space because they are afraid that they will be seen as “over protective” or a “goodie goodie and not cool”</p>

<p>This is one big recipe for disaster for students who have any sort of unexpected large loss.</p>

<p>So what can we do. </p>

<p>Before we send them off to college we drill into their heads that no hurt is forever. That just the passage of time helps everything. That no matter how bad things seem they will get better. That they can call home or go for help anytime. That drinking is a horrible idea when they are sad because they will not be thinking straight. We teach them to try and watch their friends. To notice others and how they might need help.</p>

<p>Maybe this will help. Chances are that it might not. BUT it’s something. </p>

<p>We can’t stop our kids from being impulsive, from drinking too much and from getting hurt. We all cross our fingers and hope beyond hope that they will make it to 25. And sadly as Mallen knows, some of them won’t make it. No matter how hard we try, no matter what we do.</p>

60

<p>sax, You make so many good points. I agree that the most important message is that the passage of time changes everything. I recall feeling (as an adolescent girl) that my life would never improve. Later, as an adult, I could see that was immature thinking. We need to stress that to the younger generation. But, how do we (the parents) do that, as most teens believe their parents are ‘stupid’ and ‘out of touch?’</p>