In the time that I've been connected to suicide prevention work, I've done a lot of thinking, writing, and planning about college student suicide prevention. In my past life, I worked on a college campus, and just before that, I was a college student.
So the issue of college student suicide prevention has been with me for a while. My personal perspective on college student autonomy has shifted significantly over the past decade, as I've gone from being a young person to being, well, an old person, or at the very least, an older person. I have legit gray hair, but still (attempt to) use the word legit.
The question of young adults' autonomy, which I used to see as much more black-and-white, I now see as a much more nuanced reality. The issue has become a little "hotter" lately as there's been lots of talk about whether to bring parents into the picture when a student seems at risk for suicide.
When I read the story of Daniel Kim, a Virginia Tech student who died by suicide four years ago, I brought all of these parts of myself: the former college student with a family history of mental illness, the former student life professional who ended up with a suicidal student in her office, and the "legit" suicide prevention professional, with degrees and certifications and more questions than answers.
I can't begin to even pose all of the questions in this one post, much less try to answer them, but I'd like to start with one:
What are we going to do about stigma?
One of the first comments I received when I shared the article about Daniel Kim with friends was in response to Daniel's father's statement: "If I'd known, I could have taken him to doctors, get him on medication, make him normal again."
College students, just like a lot of other people, refuse to get help because "getting help" is stigmatized. It's stigmatized by their peers, their parents, and campus systems themselves.
Mr. Kim isn't the only person who thinks that someone who struggles with mental illness isn't "normal." In fact, he has a lot of support from companies that offer tuition insurance. If a student needs to leave campus for medical reasons, this insurance is designed to cover costs. Unfortunately, mental health conditions are excluded. As a colleague said, "This provides some strong incentive for families to want to encourage the student to finish out the semester if at all possible, so as not to lose thousands and thousands of dollars. Where is the pressure to provide parity in tuition insurance so that the kid who gets mono is treated the same as the kid who gets depression?"
So, that's one way that autonomy isn't so simple - informing parents may not mitigate risk. What are others?
I plan to spend some more time addressing other aspects of this issue in future posts, so please share your thoughts.
Copyright 2012 Elana Premack Sandler, All Rights Reserved
