suicide rates at different colleges

College Search & Selection
1

One target school was in the news recently for having an alarming number of students commit suicide (6 students in less than 2 years.) It made me want to look for or find data on other schools before applying. I can’t find that anyone has gathered this data systematically but thought someone here might know where I can find this or how I might gather it for a dozen or so schools. I expect that most schools and applicants are afraid to discuss this with each other.

Can you offer any tips for finding or gathering data on student suicide rates at different colleges?

2

Are you referring to Penn?
The Boston Globe recently ran an article on how MIT’s suicide rate for undergraduates is 12.5 per 100,000 students.

The national average is 6.5 per 100,000 students.

Many schools try to sweep this type of data under the rug. It may be difficult to find. MIT is the only college I could find hard data for.

Anecdotally, my mother, who lived most of her life in Ithaca, told me that Cornell has a very high suicide rate as well.

3

I was alarmed by MIT’s recent rate. I didn’t want to name them because when I do quick news searches I find some news stories of suicides at most comparable universities. One student op ed piece at Stanford shared how students committed suicide at Stanford, Harvard, and Yale within that month. I think the rate is concerning at many places. I appreciate that the federal government has required schools to collect data on crime including reported sexual assaults and drug and underage drinking arrests. Even though these statistics are inconsistently gathered across schools (it’s hilarious or sad how many schools with serious underage drinking problems report 0 liquor law violations), it is a nice step in the right direction.

I wish the federal government or others would take similar steps with suicide rates. Perhaps niche.com or princeton review could survey students about suicidal ideation, though this might make some schools even more opposed to their students participating freely in these surveys. Anything is better than schools sweeping such information under the rug, applicants being afraid to ask about it, and people relying on rumors, hearsay, and anecdotes.

The US Department of Education gathers and shares data on murder and negligent manslaughter at all US colleges. While suicide is not a crime in the same way, it claims fare more victims, seems more relevant, and is often cloaked in more secrecy.

4

Fortunately, the absolute numbers for these tragedies can be low or zero for years at a time at individual colleges, making a statistically meaningful analysis difficult. For example, Cornell University, mentioned above, went from a period that included part of 2005 to the fall semester of 2009 without a single suicide. (Inside Higher Ed.)

5

Didn’t William & Mary have a tough year this past year? 4 I believe for a relatively small school.

Is suicide at college becoming more prevalent or is there less of a stigma about reporting the cause of the death as suicide?

6

@merc81 Not only that, but it’s hard to extrapolate anything about suicide rates at different colleges. After all, the schools the OP is likely looking into primarily educate 18-25 year olds, aka the group most likely to develop mental illnesses and ultimately kill themselves. William and Mary might be a hotbed for suicide but it could also be due to who it educates. The school may provide outstanding resources for mental health, but the onus is ultimately on the student in question to take advantage of them. After all, almost all students in college are adults who cannot be forced into treatment, no matter how much professors, peers, or any behavioral intervention team interferes.

to the OP, It’s far more important to look into the mental health resources a school provides or refers students to, and how the school treats students who do develop such issues while they attend.

7

You can find them through various news searches, but I guarantee you they are not reflective of the overall student body and it should not be your primary criteria for judging a school. Suicides can happen for various reasons, many of them not academics related. The majority of students I know at students with supposedly higher suicide rates are very happy where they are. I think the bigger issue is that students who happen to commit suicide or having suicidal thoughts rarely show signs or admit them to others, so it seems very sudden. It can either be because of stigma or because they don’t want to burden their friends. It is a serious issue and one that we should work towards solving, but oftentimes the media jumps to conclusions for the reasons for the suicides rather than discovering the underlying causes, which is often never revealed. It is for this reason that I would have to agree with merci81 that it is very difficult to glean any really useful knowledge from this, and that you shouldn’t pass up a school that may be a good fit and the majority of students are happy at, with only a few discresionary case studies to pull from

8

I went to the school that supposedly, at the time, had the Highest Suicide Rate in the country. Not only that, but I lived in the alleged Highest Suicide Rate Dorm. A friend got appendicitis and was carried out of that dorm in a stretcher, with an intrepid student journalist running beside him, asking “Was it a suicide attempt?” That was at Northwestern. I don’t think we were particularly miserable on the whole. We just drew that year’s statistical lottery number. But now, in the internet era, a “record” can be extrapolated from statistics that aren’t very meaningful and then magnified and repeated in an echo chamber. Individual tragedy doesn’t necessarily mean anything about the general student experience. If anything, it probably urges that school to pay even more attention to outreach. Maybe just ask a lot of questions about whether students generally seem happy there, or google student reviews to get a bit of a read on it …

9

Wow! I never talked about using suicide rates as the primary criterion for judging a school. My spreadsheet currently has over 20 other factors. I also did not intend to use just one year’s data or without confidence intervals, as I have a background in statistics.

For years, schools used arguments similar to those above for why they shouldn’t need to report sexual assaults or other crimes. Of course that didn’t stop many of them from collecting and broadcasting the far smaller numbers of their students who won Rhodes scholarships. One could argue that the students’ efforts and aptitude won them the Rhodes scholarships, much more than the schools they attended did. Many more students commit suicide than win Rhodes scholarships. I feel that if a student commits suicide, the impact on that student and on other students in the college is much larger than if a student wins a Rhodes scholarship.

10

I just posted this on another thread, so I’ll post it here too in regards to Cornell/Ithaca:

Cornell does NOT have a large amount of suicides. Not recently, not in the past, and almost definitely not in the future. There are very few suicides in the Ithaca area compared to other towns of its size. The problem is that often when people do take their lives in Ithaca, they do so by jumping into the gorges, which is very dramatic and very public. When people quietly take their lives in their own home, it is not publicized. When someone jumps off a bridge and there are potential witnesses, or at least people wake up to the sound of ambulances, it is widely known. However, most of the people who do kill themselves in Ithaca are NOT CORNELL STUDENTS. Many are from out of town or are adults living in the Ithaca area. People often make jokes about the nets surrounding the gorges, but they are there for safety and preventative measures. It’s not like people jump off all the time. It happens very rarely. I volunteered for Ithaca’s Suicide Prevention & Crisis Services, so I am very passionate about eliminating this incredibly misleading stigma surrounding our school.

11

Re #9, in fairness, there was one particular year somewhat recently where for a while it seemed like people were queuing up to jump into a gorge. It DID have a lot that year, 2009 IIRC, and they received quite a bit of publicity. What was overlooked in the reaction to that anomalous cluster was the long-term statistics, and the fact that the preceding four years, 2005-2008, there were no such incidents whatsoever.

12

" I feel that if a student commits suicide, the impact on that student and on other students in the college is much larger than if a student wins a Rhodes scholarship."

Hard to argue re: impact on that student. He’s dead, after all.

As for the remaining students, perhaps that “impact theory” might be true in a teeny LAC, or where you happened by chance to know the student. But, FWIW, that was not my experience at the larger institutions that I attended. Basically my experience was, you read about it in the school paper, think “too bad, that person must have been really unhappy”. Then read the sports page, finish your coffee and go back to study.

In a student body of 20,000, if two people happen to die tragically over the course of a school year, chances are good that they were in different schools there than you are, you didn’t know them, and you never even saw them. There really isn’t much impact at all, to be honest.

Now if a cluster develops, that’s different. After a number of such incidents people start wondering what the heck is going on here. But those cases are few and far between. And you can’t anticipate them by looking at some prior year’s statistics. They are by nature anomalous. Nobody can say where the next cluster will happen.

13

@monydad Yeah I believe it was 2009; I remember it pretty well. But as you said, that was the first incident of student suicide in years. Suicides do often happen in clusters because the death of one person may trigger similar feelings in another.

And of course these deaths are extremely tragic and all suicides are horrible no matter how they are carried out. But as I said, jumping from a gorge carries a much larger public impact than overdosing in your apartment.

14

I’m going into Cornell and I asked people about the suicide rates. I heard the same thing @Ranza123 is saying but I also hear that the suicide rate (which isn’t as high as people blow it up to be) is also partially due to people who visit the campus and commit suicide there.

15

Are these numbers including accidental suicides (overdose)?

16

@DaedricSaiyan Yes, most of the recent suicides on campus have been people from out of town or adults who live near the area. Very few, aside from the deaths in 2009, were students.

17

@theorist I think your inquiry is reasonable, but, as I’m sure you know, the subject is both sensitive and complex.

The complexity comes from the fact that occurrences are both infrequent and have a tendency to cluster. Anything less than a 10 year measurement period is suspect. The frequency varies by age, gender, race and time. This makes it very hard to tell if prevention programs are working.

The prevailing opinion now appears to be that it is good to talk about it, whereas in the past people assumed talking about it increased the frequency. So, in the spirit of creating a dialog, here is the data I could find:

College students appear to to commit suicide at about half the rate of the age group within the general population. One theory is that this is due to the lack of access to firearms (which account for about half the suicides in the general population).

In terms of the size of the problem:
About 6% seriously consider suicide
About 1.5% attempt it (women attempt more often)
Less than 1% are successful (men have a higher rate)

Here is a summary of data.

1936-1961 Study (quoted by MIT) Harvard, Yale, UC Berkley, MIT have similar rates

1960’s MIT has a cluster of suicides and starts keeping records
1964-1999 - 14.6 per 100,000 student years – (47 total)

1980’s - 19 per 100,000 Same time period as Big 10 Study
1990’s – 10 per 100,000 (Globe Study)
1995-2004 – 10.2 per 100K; ugrads 18.7, grads 5.7 (11 total)
2005-2015 – 10.9 per 100K; ugrads 12.7, grads 8.5 (12 total)

1970’s Cornell has a cluster of suicides (9 total)
Another cluster at the end of the 90’s (5 total)
Another cluster in 2009/2010 (6 total)
1990-2010 (15 total)
1990’s – 5.7 per 100,000 (Globe Study)
Since the 70’s (27 total)

1980’s Big 10 Study (Big 10, UChicago and Penn State)
University rates ranged from 3.1 to 16.3 per 100,000 student years
National average for age group about 15 per 100,000
Average 7.5 per 100,000 student years, (Median 6.2)
Undergrad Males 9.3
Grad Males 11.6
Undergrad Females 3.4
Grad Females 9.1

University of Illinois Study UIUC
6.9 per 100,000 1976- 10/1984 (on campus only)
3.1 per 100,000 10/1984- 2002 (on campus only - after reduction program)

1990’s Boston Globe Study - 12 schools, some data public
Most fewer than 7 per 100,000
MIT- 10.2 per 100,000 (enrollment 4.5KU, 6.5KG)
Harvard – 7.4 per 100,000 (enrollment 6.7KU, 14.5KG)
Johns Hopkins – 7.0 per 100,000 (enrollment 6KU,15KG)
Cornell – 5.7 per 100,000 (enrollment 14KU, 7KG)
Michigan – 2.5 per 100,000 (28KU, 15KG)

2005 -2015 Boston Globe Study (4 schools responded so far)
MIT – 10.2 per 100,000

12.6 per 100,000 undergrad
8.5 per 100,000 grad
Harvard – 5.4 per 100,000
11.2 per 100,000 undergrad
WPI – 1.0 per 100,000
BC – 1 suicide in last 30 years (enrollment: 9KU, 4.5KG)

Recently reported Clusters

William and Mary
2014-2015 (4 suicides) (enrollment; 6.3KU, 2.1KG)
2010 -2015 (8 suicides)
1968-2010 (14 suicides)
Total (22 suicides)

UPenn
6/13-6/15 (6 suicides) (enrollment; 10KU, 11KG)

Tulane
2014-2015 (4 suicides) (enrollment; 8.4KU, 5.2KG)

2006 Oxford Study
48 suicides in 30 years (current enrollment - 12000 undergrads 10,000 grads)
32 Male, 16 Female (relative size of male, female population unreported)
Similar rate to National population
Similar rate to Cambridge University
71% Undergrad (relative size of undergrad, grad population unreported)
60% Arts vs. 40% Sciences (relative size of Arts, Sciences population unreported)

References

Cornell summary
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_gorge_suicides

William and Mary (pre 2011) and 2011-present
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/19/AR2010111905459.html
http://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/article_d959acf8-0393-5a9e-b55b-77bbc73e4093.html

Silverman Big 10 Study (1980’s)
http://clementicenter.rutgers.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Silverman-et-al_The-Big-10-Suicide-Study.pdf

Boston Globe Study Summary (1990’s)
http://web.mit.edu/~sdavies/www/mit-suicides/
http://dailyprincetonian.com/news/2001/03/study-finds-mit-harvard-have-highest-rates-of-student-suicide/

Boston Globe Summary (2015)
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/03/16/suicide-rate-mit-higher-than-national-average/1aGWr7lRjiEyhoD1WIT78I/story.html

Oxford Study (1976-2006)
http://cebmh.warne.ox.ac.uk/csr/Student%20Report%2026nov09.pdf

MIT Culture Circa 2005
http://discovermagazine.com/2005/jun/mit-nerds

MIT Reaction to 2014
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/03/16/mit-students-open-about-stress/dS61oA5tiKqjvVsJ5VZRAL/story.html

WBUR Roundtable after 2014

University of Illinois study
http://www.stetson.edu/law/conferences/highered/archive/2003/PreventSuicide.pdf

WIlliam and Mary Victim Background Circa 2010, Published 2015
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/04/30/i-wish-i-had-never-told-my-brother-to-get-help-from-our-college-when-he-was-suicidal/

UPenn
http://billypenn.com/2015/05/15/penn-student-newspaper-editor-administration-tried-to-stifle-suicide-coverage/

Tulane
http://college.usatoday.com/2015/02/03/tulane-university-grapples-with-rise-in-student-deaths/

Columbia
http://www.wikicu.com/Suicides

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/03/16/cornell

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerome-schultz/lowering-the-pressure-in-_b_6889466.html

18

@momonalaptop “A friend got appendicitis and was carried out of that dorm in a stretcher, with an intrepid student journalist running beside him, asking “Was it a suicide attempt?” That was at Northwestern.”

That is very funny.

@Ranza123 Is correct that many of the people who “Gorge Out” at Cornell are not Cornell students.

Students at top colleges in particular can be under a lot of stress at times. If that is combined with a mental disorder or illness, bad things can happen. At any Ivy, Stanford, MIT, Northwestern, Cal Tech, Johns Hopkins, etc. From what I have read, it seems that most of these students are not put over the edge by the school alone, but had issues before they got there that grew. Additionally, when you add in sports, clubs, jobs, social life, research, classes, labs, recitation, it can all become overwhelming.

I am not an expert, but I believe there is one thing parents can do to help reduce the frequency of these incidents. Please do not set unrealistic expectations for your student, especially at a top school. I think that it is important to let your student know that you will always have their back. Many students are afraid to tell their parents when the chips are down and school is not going well. Try to keep that line of communication open, if you can. Be sure they know they can count on you for support. You may think that your student knows that, but if you haven’t said it, you may be wrong. You never think it will be your child, but no parent ever does.

19

Anyone know if there have been suicides recently at Stanford?

20

It really is an ode to the pressure that our kids are under now. They are basically forced at a very young age to decide what they want to do for the rest of their lives. They do not feel they have the option to take off how ever long it takes after high school to find themselves and ponder what they wish to do. College has gotten so expensive that most kids can only take one bite at the apple and if they blow it, they blow it. Too much pressure and some kids just pop. Very tragic.