Colleges and suicide

jamimom
Fri, 03 Dec 2004 16:01:34 +0000

The fact of the matter is that there are way too many kids attempting suicide at college. Though most of the students are legally adults, there is a residual responsibility attached to the schools, not to mention the adverse publicity about the suicides. I know that NYU has been scratched from several kids’ lists because the parents are afraid of the number of suicides that have made the press recently. Though the schools are not really interested in dealing with mental health issues beyond making a clinic available for those kids who seek help, the situation has forced them to take some action. The Shin suit in particular has brought this issue to the forefront. But anyone who has dealt with mental health issues well knows that it is a very tricky endeavor to try to help someone who is bipolar or has any other severe neuroses much less psychoses. Many of these kids who end up attempting suicide, and some succeeding have had a history of mental health issues that the family has kept covered up for fear it would affect college acceptances. And,yes, it can. Who wants to deal with a kid that is known to be high risk that way, when you know you will be getting a number of such kids? The schools’ response to try to screen them and then force them out and into therapy if they are found to have issues is really to protect them from having those kids attempting suicide at school. I really did not sympathise with the bipolar student featured in the article. There really is no way I would want to have to monitor such a person who is not taking meds and has had an incident. As for kids not reporting such maladies, it already is an issue. And classmates do tend to be hesitant about reporting aberrant behaviour because of possible consequences. But when someone acts suicidal, I think a line has been crossed, and such a student needs to take a term off to reassess his mental health and his aberrant actions. A college is simply not set up to monitor someone in that situation. And the parents should be terribly concerned. Having read the Shin account, I feel that in that case, the parents had plenty of indications that their daughter was mentally ill, and find it hard to believe that they did not remove their daughter and get some help several times over.

I know a situation right now where a very bright, very qualified young lady is applying to top colleges. She has eating disorders and has been treated several times for them in the time I have known her. Should she be let loose at a top school? What should the parents do about monitoring her? They have had problems doing this even with her at home. How on earth is a college going to be able to monitor her when her family who is very solicitous cannot?

I have known families who have dealt with the problem head on, kept a gifted young student home until she/he was well on track with the issues. I have also known too many kids who ended up home after a risky episode. It may come to the point where colleges request information about mental health on the application.