It’s Mardi Gras week in New Orleans, and students at Tulane University are busy prepping for the weekend’s celebrations. But for some students, getting into the party spirit this year is proving difficult.
"Students are trying to stay positive, and of course many of them are excited for Mardi Gras weekend," Dusty Porter, Tulane’s vice president of student affairs, said. "But it’s balanced by students struggling through some really unexpected losses."
This is especially so, Porter said, within the university’s law school, where one student shot and killed another -- his girlfriend -- before killing himself last week. The murder-suicide brought the total number of student deaths at Tulane this year to seven. Four of the deaths have been suicides.
The cluster of students committing suicide, in particular, has rattled the Tulane campus and has left a university with a seemingly robust approach to mental health clambering to do more. "It’s a challenging time," Porter said. "But hopefully we’ll be better in terms of our services after it’s all said and done. We’re trying to mourn the loss of the students, but also trying to take stock of what we’re doing."
In the last year, the university has strengthened its communication efforts to students about what counseling services exist, organized webinars for students and parents, and hosted mental health fairs on campus. A 24-hour hotline that can put students directly in touch with licensed counselors and psychologists no matter the time of day will begin taking calls in the next week or so, Porter said.
The new services join the university’s existing efforts to prevent suicide, including training programs for faculty and staff. In 2013, Tulane received a federal three-year, $300,000 grant to hire a "campus coordinator for suicide prevention training programs" and to increase outreach to students. Later that year, Tulane was awarded the JedCampus seal, which recognizes colleges that exhibit "comprehensive mental health promotion and suicide prevention programming," from the Jed Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works to prevent suicide among college students.
Tulane’s counseling and psychological services have seen a 40 percent increase in students seeking their services this year.
"It’s difficult to attribute causality," Porter said. "It’s maybe because we're moving through a challenging time right now. It’s maybe because those challenges and our efforts are raising awareness and helping to fight stigma. Or it could be more of larger change among this generational cohort. I do think we are seeing a generation where students are experiencing greater anxiety and depression."
A report released last week by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at the University of California at Los Angeles found that the emotional health of incoming freshmen is at its lowest point in at least three decades. According to the American College Health Association, 32 percent of students say they have felt so depressed "that it was difficult to function." Even so, the rate of suicide among college students is much lower than that of the general population. Somewhere between 6 and 8 percent of college students report having serious suicidal thoughts, but only between 1 and 2 percent of students will actually attempt suicide each year.
Those percentages are, of course, an average, said Victor Schwartz, medical director at the Jed Foundation. A university could go years without a student committing suicide, he said, then experience a cluster of them in quick succession.
Tulane is not alone in having such a cluster this year. Since September, nine students have died at Appalachian State University, as has a student who recently dropped out. Three of the deaths were ruled suicides, including that of a student who went missing in September.
Like Tulane, Appalachian State has also seen a sharp increase in students using its counseling and psychological services, according to a report provided to the university’s Board of Trustees in December. Since 2009, initial interviews with students have increased by 65 percent and individual therapy sessions have risen by 50 percent.
The number of students who say they have thoughts of ending their lives has increased by 118 percent, to 400 students this past fall, according to case reports assembled by the counseling center. The students who committed suicide this year were not in counseling, said Dan Jones, director of the university’s counseling center.
"Some students are struggling more and some are just more aware and more willing to seek counseling," Jones said. "We’re always trying to break down that stigma and advertise and promote these services."
Read more at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/02/12/several-students-commit-suicide-tulane-appalachian-state