Colleges and suicide

sac
Fri, 03 Dec 2004 14:43:31 +0000

Another interesting point was that many of the suicidal students come to college with previous, serious mental health diagnoses that the colleges do not know about. The Columbia student featured, for example, was bipolar and had a history of substance abuse, but stopped taking her meds. When she was forced to withdraw from school for a year, she was hospitalized. So, this was not someone who just felt pressure at exam time. The article pointed out that students with such histories are often the ones who do not make use of the campus counseling services.

I wondered, though, about the policy of forcing students to withdraw for a year. Would other students, learning about the policy, be afraid to go seek help in case the university then tells them they have to pack up and head home?