So sorry Apollo6, and so sorry for Madison and her family. There probably are quite a few individuals who are busy, talented and productive, who mask their depression because they don’t want anyone to know.
During my last year of college a boy (who I knew through the girl who lived across the hall from me) disappeared and they found him dead in the gorge weeks later. His friend told me some of the back story, which included academic failure. However, I had met him, and he had seemed within normal limits emotionally. He was friendly and had people he was connected with. His parents took out a full page ad in the Cornell Daily Sun, which pointed out many shortcomings of the university for those who had mental health issues. They blamed the large nature of the university, where many have no responsible mature adults who they connect with regularly (and who are concerned with the student), for his decision. I know that many may feel isolated despite having many friends.
However, we can see that even though the students have people that they are involved with, and parents that know they are suffering, others are powerless to help. I am sure that this is so difficult for their loved ones.
I would add to the things that polarium listed above; even those who have someone to talk to may feel that the family, friends, or even professional counselor don’t understand them and what they are going through. I think actual isolation is likely very depressing, but despite being with people a person can feel isolated. Without focusing too much on the details of Madison, she had been talking to friends, family, coaches and even a therapist, and it had not helped her yet. Also, perfectionism can become destructive to the person.
Here is something I don’t understand. Why would we expect an institution to be responsible for the recognition and then care of the mental health of its students? I certainly didn’t expect the institution to recognize and then treat the illness in my own student, any more than I would expect it to be able to manage the care of a complicated physical illness. My oldest has an MI. My youngest has severe allergies an asthma. Both conditions require the care of a specialist and in neither case would I expect that their colleges could handle that. In the latter case, if the institution were to step in and want status reports, etc, from the kid with asthma about how she was handling it or wanted to spot check her for an inhaler, well, let’s just say it wouldn’t go over very well.
I realize this is an age when many MIs will make a first appearance. I’d like institutions, especially residential colleges, to educate and to have health services that screen. I think campus counseling is wonderful. Many students benefit from the availability of someone to help with adjustment or other short term issues or simply to have someone to say, “Something bigger is going on here. Let’s send you for some more help.” I am, however, very, very hesitant to see institutions get into the business of being the primary treatment option for diseases that require the attention of medical specialists. Honestly, it’s outside the scope of their expertise.
@Apollo6, I am so deeply sorry for your loss. Have you contacted NAMI? I know they have support groups for peole who have lost loved ones to mental illness.
This may come off as insensitive and that is certainly not my intent (my own brother took his life when I was a Penn student 30+ years ago, and there was nowhere to go for support at that time), but I think that when you’re dealing with a student who has clear perfectionistic tendencies and also has a history of depression, you need to be very careful about the types of schools you encourage him or her to attend.
One of the things that struck me about Madison’s story (see here: http://www.phillymag.com/articles/penn-suicides-madison-holleran/) is that it appears, in hindsight anyway, that she felt pressured to attend the more elite/prestigious school, even though she couldn’t even play her favorite sport (soccer) there. Would she have been happier at Lehigh, where she could have played soccer and possibly been in a slightly less competitive environment? No one will ever know, but it’s pretty clear she was not happy at Penn. Prestige and “success” do not automatically lead to happiness, and it’s hard to be happy if you’re someone who needs to always be “the best” and is now in an environment where it’s challenging to maintain that status in one’s own eyes and/or the eyes of others. Penn was a very competitive and frequently cutthroat environment when I went there; its rise in prestige has likely increased those issues, although I’m guessing there’s a lot more support there now than there was back in the day.
Nevertheless, placing yourself into a bubble of hyper-competitive students is probably not the best place for someone with a recent history of depression or other mental health issues. It’s not a failure to choose a more nurturing or less competitive environment, and while we all want our kids to be successful, we need to be really careful what unintentional messages they’re getting from us. And we need to talk about suicide with all our children–even the ones who seem “just fine.”
Lucie, I think that for those in the large hyper competitive bubble, the “natural” frustrations of dealing with scare resources - dorm rooms, class signup, anonymity, can be just awful.
While I doubt that the colleges could prevent someone’s suicide, I think they could do more for students. As to what Ordinarylives said about why expect the school to recognize the student’s issues, I think that is possible if as a family you are educated in what the university system can provide. Large schools like Penn and Cornell don’t come with warning label “you may be very anonymous here and it will be depressing to many”. Some have gone on the tour circuit and seen the place, others haven’t. Some have educated parents who can offer advice, others don’t. Perhaps no one explained what a class schedule of solely giant lecture classes is like. Maybe you won’t speak to a single person all day long. Cornell still says the College of Arts and Sciences is a “suberb small liberal arts college at the center of an outstanding research university”. I can’t believe that this is any more true today than it was 40 years ago when they said it and I attended. When you go to intro psych and it is 1000 folks big, it is not like a small liberal arts college. Never was, never will be. While many students love the large structure, many others, especially in a pressure situation, falter because there is no regular contact with mature adults who care to get to know them. I would never say interfere in the student’s care, but at least try to connect to see if someone needs care. If someone came to class all battered and bruised and no one even asked what happened wouldn’t that be wrong? How can anyone know how someone is doing emotionally if there is no one even there to ask how it is going. I could go on about the dorm situations and the like (uncaring residential staff just looking for free housing in many instances), but I will stop here. If you send your kid off to live in a big city like NYC or London and get a job, well there they are on their own. However, I think the college should present more than you are on your own or you must seek out help. Back in the day when the ad came up, many students found that what the parents said resonated. The president had to meet with groups of students about it.
And neither do I mean to be insensitive to the issue at hand with my comments. It seems we are also making a separation here between exceptionally high achieving students in a competitive environment who take their lives and and those other students who fall into depression due to other factors and take their lives.
I bring that up to ask if more emphasis should be given to teaching our children at a younger age that in their quest to strive for excellence how they need to learn, truly learn, to accept and deal with imperfect results. Can the suicidal tendencies somehow be thwarted earlier on in a child’s life before it starts? I cannot say, just trying to figure it out like the rest of us.
It dawned on me when my son was in college to say to him, “I’m not worried whether you will succeed. I know you will. But have I taught you the right tools for learning how to get back on your feet in the face of failure, tragedy, heartache?” It didn’t occur to me when he was younger that that’s how I felt. I just want him to know I don’t expect everything to work out for him all the time, despite his very best efforts, since that is how life works.
Apollo so very sorry for your loss and thanks for sharing your son’s story. His story and others make clear that there are not always signs and that “impulsive” suicide can occur without much warning
It is not that simple Lucie. The pressure may well come from within. She might have been no happier at a less competitive college. Her dad offered to have her transfer somewhere, anywhere. I have several friends who worry about the pressure their kids put on themselves and try to get them to relax, with virtually no success. A friend’s daughter went to a much less competitive college than Penn and still put tremendous pressure on herself to be the best. My friend really urged her to relax and enjoy, but the daughter was not satisfied with anything less than being the best. In her case, that attitude worked as she had a good time and also graduated college at the top of her class. Many people suffer from depression at some point in time. However, most do not contemplate suicide.
There is a fine line between having high enough expectations and letting our kids know that not being the best or not being perfect is OK. That line may differ with the kid who is a bit of a slacker and the one that is a perfectionist. Talking about this and listening to our kids if they express signs of depression or of being overwhelmed is very important. Along with keeping the lines of communication open and letting our kids know they can tell us anything.
@mom2and, I realize there are no simple answers. Clearly, Madison was someone for whom the pressure “came from within,” and one is left wondering if she ever felt truly “happy” or like she was “good enough.” I just think that the likelihood that a student with those types of issues will become overwhelmed, desperate, or despondent is more likely to occur–and very quickly–in a pressure-cooker environment like Penn’s.
Madison wasn’t one of those students who never exhibited any “warning signs” as I understand it. That latter category is the most troubling of all for parents, which is why it’s best to assume that there’s no such thing as a person who would “never” contemplate suicide and to talk to our kids about what they should do if they ever have thoughts of ending their lives.
According to this from Inside Higher Education, elite colleges do NOT have more suicides:
and
Thus, while it seems intuitive that a less competitive environment would be better, it is not clear that steering a perfectionist, high achieving kid to a more nurturing college will have the desired effect.
I have a child who suffers from depression/insomnia and made an attempt on his life. We were lucky in that the pills he used were old and had lost a lot of their potency.
For me, it was clear something was amiss. His depression came out as extreme, extreme anger. He was doing very poorly at school. We tried to get him help, and we even forced him to go to a therapist, who told us after about 3 sessions that he refused to cooperate. Dealing with depression in a late adolescent child made me feel, as a parent, scared, sad, powerless, frustrated and angry.
At around the same time a family that we knew of went through the tragedy of having their youngest child take his own life. For them, it was very unexpected. It occurred after he did something stupid in college and that got law enforcement involved (but it was really very minor) and later that week shot himself dead.
So there are times when it’s very apparent, and times when it is not. For parents of boys, although they attempt suicide less than girls, they are usually more successful, because often they use guns.
My son is still dealing with his problem, and I am thankful he is home (had issues at college), working, alive and for the most part happy now. And there are ups and downs, better periods and hard ones.
Let me also say that parenting a depressed adolescent is very different. For example, losing privileges to spur motivation usually does not work. The depression just saps their motivation. There is little internal or external elements that can actually spur that desire.
Re #44, I personally know kids who suffered from depression while attending LACs. Can I conclude that maybe 20 somethings get depressed from too much adult contact ?
There cannot possibly be studies that conclude that LAC students have superior mental health to university students.
Why do I make that assertion? Because if there were, CC would be plastered with them, along with the 6 zillion pages of “%PhD” tables.
So let’s not “overfit the data:”.
My own guess is the amount of adult contact has little effect. The nature of the interaction and behavior in a typical classroom setting is not similar to a parent-child relationship. When friend of my kid was depressed and got worse grades in the LAC, each of the profs, in those smaller classes, just gave the kid worse grades. Nothing more.
I think some big problems are::
-parents in general are not trained in adolescent child development/psychology; do not really understand what is going on; do not know enough to “connect the dots” , or what to do about it
(eg kid is getting worse grades: maybe material is harder now?)
The counseling industry itself is far from perfect. It is not an exact science. sometimes kids are misdiagnosed. (eg depressed kid diagnosed as having ADD) Or parents are given bad advice.
-Some of these psychological symptoms often start manifesting themselves in late adolescence when parents are not around as much or at all to see them. In late HS, parents are frequently being more and more excluded as a normal developmental stage. First year college they are often actually physically not there
If student is not there, parents cannot oversee treatment
the people who are there do not know student from before, to know that there is any difference, and are not there to dligently oversee student’s progress and well-being.
kids are put in new situations for the first time that can be stressful- social as well as, or maybe moreso than, academic. Some students will initially go dateless, and friendless. At the most academically challenging colleges, in the intro curved classes, most students who’ve received A’s all their lives will be getting less than As. They will see lots of kids who know exactly what they want to do with their lives, while they maybe still have no idea.
All of this is stressful.
This is so scary. I have a DD who had a best friend commit suicide their freshman year despite everything seeming normal. At the same time DD was really struggling to fit in at a very high pressure school. I would be lying if I didn’t say that we were worried.
@monydad excellent points. When my son became depressed, it took many months to figure out what was wrong. I actually considered he had a late manifesting learning disability because he lost the ability to concentrate and work independently halfway through high school as the work became more difficult. He continued to slide downhill for many months while I cast around for what was wrong and focused on the wrong things. I am thankful every day that he is alive.
Seems like kids might be happier if they follow their own paths instead of trying to “fit in”. From everything I’ve seen, that seems to be what some colleges are after in the admissions process.
My 16 year old daughter suffers from severe depression, and so much of this thread resonates with me. After two horrible years, she is much improved and like @JustOneDad said, a lot of it has to do with not pushing her to fit in with the ideas of success pushed on her by us (her parents), her school, her peers, the parents of her peers, and herself. Once we let go of trying to pound our square peg into a round hole, she has begun to flourish, testing out of high school, finding a job she is passionate about and excels at, and taking a few classes at community college that she is interested in.
One thing that is very important to my daughter is not to feel what she calls “boxed in,” so Madison’s note saying she felt “locked in” gave me chills. We always make sure she understands clearly what her options are if things don’t work out. I think that Madison’s parents did do this, but in her mind she must have felt there was no escape hatch other than taking her own life. We are so grateful that the onset of our daughter’s illness was early enough that we could see it happening and take the steps necessary to keep her safe. If she had been away at college, we probably would have lost her.
One of the proven methods for preventing suicide in people with depression, is Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) which teaches coping skills for those times that emotions and circumstances seem insurmountable. Especially in young people, suicide attempts often happen because of impulsivity and the lack of understanding that bad feelings and situations are temporary. DBT teaches skills to cope with those feelings until they have passed. Some middle schools in California have begun teaching DBT. Some colleges are implementing extracurricular mindfulness classes, on which DBT is based. We are putting so much pressure on our children at such a young age now, but not teaching them how to deal with that pressure. So, with the high suicide rates among college students, maybe DBT is something colleges should consider introducing at orientation, or offering to freshman over a semester. (My daughter and I did an 18-week course, and it has been life changing for us both.).
@Apollo6, my heart hurts for you, and I’m so sorry for your loss.
Monydad at post 51 makes some good points; the last 2 resonate with me. That the LAC profs could be uncaring, actually I guess I already knew this (but wasn’t focusing on it) from a couple of personal stories told to me by people I know in real life of their student’s experiences. To me if you have a small group of people that you teach, you should be more aware than the Prof who has 1000 kids in his/her class. Just my opinion, but isn’t it more difficult to be hard on someone you actually interact with than someone in an impersonal large lecture. I am willing to own that I am perhaps too idealistic, or I expect more from people than is normal. Also, I certainly have a personal problem with large impersonal environments and perhaps that clouds my view of the issue.
@2dogs2kids, I like your suggestion about courses oriented to helping cope with stress. I did not study much pyschology, and I think a better understanding in general of what you can do about your own emotions is helpful.
In the re-telling of this sad story, the writer emphasizes the instagram / social media aspect of it. Despite her friends telling her they struggled too, Madison seemed to believe that the happier image that came across in their posted photos was more the truth. There have been studies linking depression to social media. Have any of your kids been negatively affected by social media? My H, D#2 and I are not at all involved with Face Book or anything and my older kids don’t have much time for it, but I have mom friends who have expressed feeling quite sad, lonely, or jealous after looking at what others post about their lives.
When my son fell ill, he recognized immediately the negative impact that Facebook had in his life and got off it altogether. I was impressed with his decision.
Ironically, it was his younger brother who I was always worried about the most! From a young age, he just didn’t smile much. Every year, his teacher would tell us that he was bright but unfocused. When he was in sixth grade, we took him to a recommended therapist. At first, she diagnosed him with “situational depression,” and the situation was his parents!! She finally figured out his perspective was off and that wasn’t correct. We really thought he had ADHD, but she said she saw no evidence of that.
Then six years later, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and ADHD! The doctor said he thought the ADHD was a bigger obstacle for him than the mental illness. We got him some help, and he’s doing great now. But why didn’t he get help back in 6th grade??
We saw NO signs of illness in our older son. “Enthusiastic” is the first word that came to mind when I thought of him as a teenager. Now I’m happy when he gets up the energy to go for a walk.
