John Westefeld, a professor at the University of Iowa, found in a recent study of four schools that 53 percent of students said they had experienced depression at some point in college, and 8.5 percent said they had thought of committing suicide. Despite the pressures, student suicide rates appear to be lower than for the public at large. Morton M. Silverman, director of the student counseling center at the University of Chicago, studied 261 suicides that occurred at 12 Midwestern campuses between 1980 and 1990. He found that the overall suicide rate of 7.5 per 100,000 was only half the rate for the same age group nationally. Silverman concluded that the suicide rate for college students is lower because counseling services are readily available on campuses, the school environment provides peer support, college officials restrict the availability of alcohol, and many colleges prohibit firearms on campus.
Some schools take further precautions.
At the University of Pennsylvania, windows in high-rise campus dorms are constructed so they cannot open entirely. Because of a spate of highly publicized suicides recently at such elite schools as Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, schools are reassessing their strategies for providing counseling services. Ilene Rosenstein, director of counseling at Penn, said her office had begun a campaign to get students and faculty to take seriously the signs of depression and suicidal behavior among their peers. Negative news coverage of these issues is pervasive and may serve to reinforce exaggerated misperceptions of actual substance use norms. Our awareness of this news coverage should strengthen our resolve not only to address AOD problems on campus, but also to advocate for news coverage that draws public attention to the responsible majority of college students.