How have these suicide rates changed in the past 30 or 40 years I wonder? In the past a student who had suffered from depression or was considered somewhat at risk by their parents may have been required to stay at home and commute to college or to go away to a nearby college. Now that “everyone” wants to go the best school possible or their dream school such students may travel half way across the country away from their families and support systems.
@TomSrOfBoston but what if the parents were part of the problem, in that case going to a college and having friends, counselors, and no parents might be a better support system lol.
According to data from the CDC and the American College Health Association, suicidal ideation in the past 12 months in college students (6.8%) is about the same as the general rate of people aged 18-25 (7.4%). There’s similar rates for attempts - 1.1% of college students attempted suicide in the 12 months prior to the survey, compared to 1.2% of 18-25 year olds in the general population.
Actually, one could argue that modern adolescents in the West have the most freedom of adolescents at any other period in history. Young people in the 18-22 range have always had to choose what they want to do, and back then it really may have been for the rest of their lives when it was more common for people to work the same trade - even the same company - their entire career. But college students aren’t really deciding what to do for the rest of their lives. They just have to pick a major. Changing careers happens very frequently now, and college degrees give students the flexibility to do what they want.
Moreover, it was very common for people to marry and have children in their late teens/early 20s. In the long-ago past, non-wealthy adolescents would’ve been working for several years by the time they were college-aged and would be expected to strike out soon and start their own homes and families. Even wealthier adolescents were working and having children at a time when today’s adolescents might be doing internships or studying abroad. And that’s without even the social burdens that women and people of color and other minority groups faced in the past.
Only wealthy people have ever had the luxury of taking time off to “ponder what they wish to do”…because most people have to earn money for a living.
One of my teachers has worked closely with people who work at the Ivies and she says there’s a lot more than what is publicized. She often talks about how there are a lot of mental breakdowns at the Ivies because suddenly these kids who have been excelling all their lives are no longer, and the stories that make it to the news are the ones they can’t conceal. I think this would apply to a lot of other top tier schools.
There’s a recent thread on CC that Columbia has had a rash of suicides as late as last month or Dec 2016…