After two first-year students died in their dorm rooms in October, Colorado State University is picking up the pieces.
Nikito Krasko, 18, hanged himself in his dorm room Oct. 12. Amelia Sundblad, also 18, died in her room Oct. 23. The county coroner has not yet released Sundblad’s cause and manner of death.
CSU President Tony Frank sent a letter to the university community last week that was heartrending for its candor. Frank encouraged students to be kind to one another and to seek help when they or friends were struggling.
Frank’s message applies to all universities. More U.S. college students die from suicide than from alcohol, according to a 2011 study commissioned by James Turner, executive director of Student Health at the University of Virginia. And one in 12 college students makes a suicide plan, a 2002 report co-sponsored by the National Mental Health Association found.
That same study established that the overall rate of completed suicides among college and university students was 7.5 per 100,000. That figure is higher than it seems. The University currently enrolls 14,641 undergraduate students on Grounds. The 7.5 per 100,000 ratio amounts to slightly more than one undergraduate suicide a year at the University. The National Center for Education Statistics estimates that a record 21.8 million students currently attend American colleges and universities. If the same ratio holds, we can expect 1635 suicides on college campuses this year.
Distressing as the numbers game is, the statistics we have (too few, by the way: suicide is an under-researched topic, largely because of social stigma surrounding mental illness) help us appreciate how broad a problem suicide is among young adults.
More Americans are attending college than ever before, and many of them come to school with pre-existing mental health conditions. Add a high-pressure social and academic environment in which students have to make their own way for the first time, and psychological volatility can turn to despair.
At universities, several groups of people play a large part in preserving students’ mental wellness. Most universities have counseling centers staffed by mental-health professionals. These counselors, however, can’t help students unless students first come to them. Likewise with deans and administrators who are available to dispense advice.
Resident advisors can play an intermediary role between struggling students and professionals who can provide guidance. RAs are tasked with being attentive to signs of psychological distress, and are trained to listen non-judgmentally to students’ concerns. Increasing numbers of college students, coupled with a high suicide rate, make the resident advisor role more important than ever. At large schools especially, RAs help students navigate an intimidating and complex bureaucracy of student services.
Even the best RA, however, can’t pick up on everything. The battalions of people trained to deal with students’ mental illnesses — RAs, counselors, deans, peer health educators — cannot help someone who refuses to seek assistance. Any effort to reduce the national college suicide rate must involve cultivating social environments at colleges that allow students to feel safe when speaking about their feelings — to RAs, faculty advisors and, most of all, friends.
Frank’s closing paragraph in his letter to the CSU community urged students to “work to be a little bit kinder, a little bit more decent, a little bit more responsible toward each other.” This emotional work — the work of compassion — is incremental, as Frank’s “little bit” qualifier suggests. It is also essential. Compassion alone will not solve the problem of college suicides, but it won’t hurt. And it’s something we all can do. As college students and members of a community, we have a responsibility to ensure that we, and our friends, do not suffer in silence.
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