Should Suicidal Students Be Forced to Leave Campus?

Parents Forum
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<p>It seems excessive to bar a student from campus entirely if he or she hasn’t acted in a way that would suggest harm to others. That it a total CYA move, and one that seems paranoid and potentially counterproductive to boot. First of all, the case that I recall in which a university was sued over a student’s suicide was one in which the university had known about the situation for a long time and not taken what the family thought were appropriate measures. I can’t see how letting him walk on campus, in the same way that any random person not enrolled in Princeton can walk on campus, would make the remotest difference in terms of an assessment of liability. In addition, if G-d forbid a student were forced to leave school over a suicide attempt and went on to kill himself at home, couldn’t the family sue then under the argument that the dismissal exacerbated his depression?</p>

<p>All the same, I don’t think it is discriminatory to tell a student who has tried to commit suicide that he needs to take a leave. The fact that WP cites a setback involving an 80 dollar lockout charge as a factor behind the attempt is really alarming to me - if that could precipitate a spiral, then a high-pressure college is the last place that student should be. </p>

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<p>Schools don’t refuse admittance or readmittance to students who have tried to commit suicide in the past. First, no student is required to disclose psychiatric problems on their initial application. If a student has gone on medical leave voluntarily or involuntarily for any health reason- medical or psychiatric (a distinction that is pretty weak), then usually that student needs to have worked or done courses or otherwise proved by his or her actions that he or she is ready to return; an MD letter is needed; and often an MD or panel at the school reviews these materials and meets with the student for a final review of readiness. This applies to any medical leave for any reason, including cancer, surgery, epilepsy, or bipolar disorder.</p>

<p>A very large proportion of college students suffer anxiety or depression, and many are on meds. In fact, this is so common that it would be a stretch to call such challenges “mental illness,” though of course they are on the DSM. I have read that as many as 50% of college students seek counseling at one time or another. Hard to pathologize what really is “normative” behavior. Campuses would be half empty if this near majority could not attend.</p>

<p>If a student goes to health services or tells an RA or counselor that he or she is suicidal, then of course action needs to be taken. The student can be “pink-slipped” by a hospital and loses freedom for a minimum of 3 days. This occurs whether at a public high school, a local health clinic, or at college. People have this disincentive to disclosing their desperation in many contexts, and the response required legally is the same. Basically, a student who admits to being suicidal, who knows how the system works, is asking to be hospitalized.</p>

<p>Hospitalizations these days are rarely more than a week. A medical leave may or may not be necessary. I know cases where the student actually returned to campus, and I know cases where the student was then gone from campus for a semester, or a year. It really depends on the situation. Proper medication can turn people around pretty quickly. Some depressions are more physiological and some are situational: every case is different.</p>

<p>The ADA protects people with disabilities, but that disability cannot cause undue cost or administrative burden for the school. And potential self-harm or harm to others is a legal basis for pink-slipping. The colleges we have dealt with deal properly with both medical and psychiatric issues in students, even if their requirements can seem harsh or even punitive. Sometimes a medical leave is just what the doctor ordered.</p>

<p>I have never heard of a past suicide attempt being a barrier to admittance, or readmittance once review by medical authorities clears the student for attendance at the present time.</p>

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<p>Huh, that’s interesting. It’s kind of a ‘damned if you do’ situation where either reaction (doing nothing or taking action) can be viewed as contributing to the suicide.</p>

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<p>If students know that they are going to be kicked out of college if they report suicidal feelings, then they’re not going to report those feelings and get the help they need. This is counterproductive.</p>

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<p>I think colleges also have to consider the impact of a mentally ill–and especially suicidal–student on roommates. It’s a big burden to ask college students to bear–especially if they didn’t choose the roommate. Moving the ill student to a single room may not be much better, though.</p>

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<p>I’ll bite. </p>

<p>When I attended my previous college, it was rumored that if a student reported suicidal feelings to the counselors, he or she would be forced to leave for at least one semester and then apply for readmission (I knew two people who this supposedly happened to, although I have no way of knowing if suicidal ideations were truly the reason for their leaves of absence). At the time I was intensely suicidal but because of the purported policy, declined to see the counselors about my thoughts and behaviors. </p>

<p>After I transferred to my current school, three faculty members privately discussed my behaviors because they were worried about me. All urged me to seek counseling, so I finally did, The counselor suggested I had bipolar disorder, a diagnosis I largely ignored until I was hospitalized for a manic episode six months later. </p>

<p>If the previous school wasn’t rumored to have the policy, there’s a good chance I would have sought out counseling much earlier, and maybe gone on the medications sooner. </p>

<p>At the same time, I agree with @Hunt‌ and others who’ve suggested this is a damned if you do, damned if you don’t type of problem, especially for other people who do not have some sort of mental disorder. </p>

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<p>Compmom: “A very large proportion of college students suffer anxiety or depression, and many are on meds.”</p>

<p>There is something very wrong with this, if this is the case. That’s horrifying. What are we doing wrong as a nation to produce so many kids who are on medications? If students are not stable, they should not be in this stressful environment. Go home and come back when you are ready. Parents and students should make this decision. </p>

<p>The university should not be responsible to monitor mental health of students, and have “groups of specialists to determine their issues” as suggested above. Goodness. That sounds pretty Big Brother-ish to me. </p>

<p>If someone is a clear danger, talk to him and his parents. Get him out of there. He does not belong in a high pressure environment, but let him come back when he does. Whatever happened to common sense (she laments, regularly)?</p>

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<p>Giving them too many meds?</p>

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<p>I apologize for sounding like a broken record. Those of you who have read my son’s story before can skip this! :)</p>

<p>My son fell ill the first semester of his freshman year, 2000 miles away. We let him finish out his first year, take summer classes, and even enroll for his second year. My parents lived nearby and were a great support for him. Towards the end of his first year, he became suicidal and was hospitalized. But the kid confounded everybody by studying for final exams IN the hospital! One of the classes was psychology, which did make him chuckle since he was learning about the illness he’d been diagnosed with. He ended up on the Dean’s List (in biomedical engineering!) for the semester. He seemed so much better we let him stay in Austin, living with my parents. His doctor had thought he would be better off at home, but we thought we should honor his request to stay at UT.</p>

<p>Looking back on it, that was probably not the best decision, but you need to realize this: For the most part, these young people have been VERY NORMAL and successful before they fell ill. My son was an Eagle Scout, Junior Olympics distance runner, excellent student, etc. Parents have no framework for understanding how such a kid could fall THAT ill THAT quickly. They want to believe it is a “temporary” illness (a possibility his first psychiatrist brought up and that we latched onto). NAMI helped us understand that we were going through a grieving process after he fell ill, and one of the stages is DENIAL. So, anyway, I can understand why some parents leave the child on campus too long.</p>

<p>Before the sophomore year started, my husband went down to Austin with him and got all sorts of support in place for him. He even talked to the co-op’s manager to let her know of his situation. My son seemed happy and stable. </p>

<p>Well, about three days into the semester, he called, feeling suicidal. We contacted his doctor, who talked to him and thought he would be all right. The following week, she called me on my cell phone and said, “Your son is in such bad shape he either needs to go to the hospital or take the NEXT plane home.” And she meant “next” quite literally. She thought that if he got home, he would be OK. And she was right, at least for another year and a half, until he had to hospitalized again.</p>

<p>Now he lives at home and takes classes. The disabilities office at his school has been wonderful. He is studying such advanced math that his engineer parents don’t understand what he’s talking about! We’re hoping he can work as an actuary or mathematician, but it’s hard to tell at this stage if that’s realistic. </p>

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<p>One comment I heard recently was illuminating. The disabilities office, in a lecture to faculty that my friend attended, explained that they have seen a huge increase in the number of students utilizing their services. But the interesting comment was that doesn’t necessarily mean more kids are falling ill. It means that more ill kids are finding support through meds and counseling and feeling strong enough to attempt college. In the past, a good percentage of the kids would have just not matriculated at all.</p>

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<p>I’m completely flummoxed by this reasoning. (I wish I could bold parts I want to address!) </p>

<p>OL: They do not get to say because you are mentally ill, you have to do x y and z or leave while this person with a physical illness, well she can comply or not.</p>

<p>Why not? The school certainly can and should be able to require a mentally ill person to address his issues in order to not cause disturbance or danger to others in the university setting, whether the dorm or the classroom, or anywhere else. If he is doing either, he needs to get out of the university setting if he cannot manage his issues to a reasonable degree. He doesn’t get the right to shift his issues onto other people to bear, any more than a person with a broken leg gets the right to demand that others begin driving him everywhere. If they want to, fine, but he should not be able to legally demand that others do it. </p>

<p>There can be additional conditions imposed where there is higher risk. The risk of a mentally ill person (especially certain conditions) harming himself or others is simply higher than that of a person with no known mental conditions. The responsibility should be commensurately higher as well. </p>

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<p>I would have no problem with the school imposing conditions on ill students. What we found, at UT at least, was that the health center wanted to pass him off to an outside doctor as quickly as possible. That was the end of their involvement with him. His current school knows he’s ill, but beyond helping him when he needs it, they have not done anything else.</p>

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<p>I won’t tell my whole story because I have already shared it several times. The short version is that a prof feared my son was suicidal. Messages and paperwork went back and forth within the school, culminating in a “come and get him phone call” a full week after the incident that provoked the prof’s concern. I could tell that there was a protocol they were following. What was missing from their checklist? Check on the student. During that week no one ever ever checked in with my son to see if he was okay. This was a school of under 2000 students. No communication with the RA to see if he was okay. No one contacted him at all. I was the one to tell him they were concerned.</p>

<p>He was okay.</p>

<p>I guess my point is to observe that at least some schools do show some attention to the student and some, not at all. The name of the game is avoiding liability.</p>

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<p>Because @Tranquilmind, like it or not, that is the disabilities law. An institution cannot hold students with one set of disabilities (mental illnesses) to a different standard than it does students with other disabilities. It cannot say that because someone with a particular disorder is more prone to violence, and this student has that particular disorder, that this students has additional requirements to meet. Should a student, with or without a disorder of any kind, start exhibiting behavior that is indicative of violence, then any institution has a duty to protect the other students on campus and set into motion the processes it has in place to remove the threat. </p>

<p>There are many parents here with children who are ADHD. Replace every reference to an MI with ADHD and a list of extra things that ADHD students “should” have to do (extra safeguards if you will) because someone believes their tendency toward impulsive behavior creates problems on campus. Tell the ADHD student this is for his own good and the safety of the other students. Never mind that the vast majority of ADHD students (just like the vast majority of students with mental illnesses) function just fine with reasonable accommodations and cause no problems (pose no threats) to anyone on campus. </p>

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<p>The students I was referring to often are high achieving students at Ivies and other top schools. They may be passionate about their studies and apparently thriving. They would hardly be considered “mentally ill.”</p>

<p>It is not just colleges that are required to react to suicidal ideation by obligatory hospitalization But a student can go to a private counselor and get hospitalized and, if school work is not affected, there is no obligation to let the college know.</p>

<p>If a student is suffering and desperate, he or she will tell a counselor and get the help needed. The student above blames the policy for a delay in treatment but 1) the student could have told the counselor the truth the first time and 2) treatment that relieved her occurred in a hospital anyway.</p>

<p>Parents should encourage kids to be truthful with professionals if they are suicidal, regardless of consequences with a school. Better to miss a term than you life.</p>

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<p>“whatever happened to common sense?”
Sort of went out of style when a great majority of mental hospitals got shut down by the ACLU, public opinion and the government wanted to save a ton of money way back 40-50 years ago. And unfortunately mental illness is a diagnosis that seems to register for most as a point of no return. Which of course isn’t true in the least. </p>

<p>“Talk to him and his parents”–great if the patient has good parents who aren’t in denial and are receptive.But what about everyone else around them? If your teen was depressed in HS and now seems fine do you tell the school, your friends, the in-laws? Uh, no–that’s a secret–from them and everyone else. Or becomes clinically depressed in college? Good and bad–everything you write/say/do gets recorded. It’s become difficult to even “unload emotional baggage” without it being recorded. Where do you go and who do you tell to “save” your kid from the future stigma? And keep college life going? And scholarships? And nobody wants it on some employment record–who’ll take the chance? That’s a societal problem that’s hard to fix. And if we don’t have mental hospitals with professionals as an alternative that makes it even harder. If society doesn’t consider mental illness as a “fixable” disease the stigma will always continue. Don’t flame me–I know “kids first”–everything else is out the door when your kids in extreme states.</p>

<p>“Nation that has so many kids on medications”–Good point but I think it’s because we HAVE so many more medications now that have never been available in the past. Which is great that we now have good alternatives that have helped tons of people minus the side effects from 30 years ago. Hard to imagine all those that have suffered in the past with no help. I won’t debate if that’s the easy fix for many situations and might not be the best solution. </p>

<p>University responsible?–I don’t think so for the most part. They are an institution that accepts students at face value… They have an obligation IMHO to have resources available and respond with a resource list if the need arises. And respond to cries of help. And hopefully be accommodating. </p>

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<p>Isn’t ADHD a type of MI?</p>

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<p>^^I think so, although in educational settings we’re more apt to call in an LD. </p>

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<p>My wife met with a college president over this very issue concerning one of her clinic’s patients - college administrators deciding what is best for a student over the objections and recommendations of mental health professionals. She did manage to get them to reconsider the one case, and they promised to “look into” their decision process that violates both the law and any semblance of common sense.</p>

<p>When a student is under the care of a professional, they should at least take the professional’s advice under consideration. They had not been doing that.</p>

<p>I think it is also worth separating those likely to harm themselves from the students likely to harm others. </p>

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<p>When a student cannot meet academic or behavioral standards even with treatment and help, he may be removed from the campus. “Behavioral standards” is a question of fact, and someone has to make that call. An disproportionate burden on the college or on the other students is not a reasonable accommodation.That’s the law, but of course, someone makes that call about what is a disproportionate burden on the administration and other students and professors too. </p>

<p>I think university is for academics, and that should be the primary purpose. Universities should not be required to involve themselves in the health issues of a student. </p>