I want to start this letter by thanking all of the students, faculty, and staff members who provided support to members of the campus community following the death by apparent suicide of one of our freshman students on Saturday, September 10. This includes a special thanks to The Polytechnic staff, who made an extra effort to get my article into the September 14 issue after it was submitted to them far after the usual deadline.
I also would like to express appreciation to the members of the community who have given us valuable suggestions about how we can improve our responses if we need to deal with a similar situation in the future. We hope and pray that we never again have one of our students take their own life.
The reality, however, is that it has been a combination of hard work by an extensive support system at Rensselaer, along with luck, that has kept our suicide rate as low as it has been. As I mentioned in my recent article, between 10-11.5 percent of college students nationally report seriously considering suicide within a one-year period. There is data that indicates that while the percentage of students at four-year institutions who report feeling depressed at the end of their first year is 10 percent, the figure for Rensselaer is 14 percent.
Of students who came into the Counseling Center during the 2004-2005 academic year, 18.5 percent reported having thoughts of life not being worth living within the six months before their initial appointment. Over the same time period 10.7 percent endorsed having “threatened, attempted, or considered suicide” within the previous six months, and 1.7 percent stated they actually had plans to take their lives. We hope to participate in a multi-university project, which would give us comparable data for the general Rensselaer student population.
Clearly there are many students at Rensselaer who are in psychological pain and are at a potential risk to harm themselves. The harm does not always take the form of a suicide attempt. It can take the form of substance abuse, or cutting behavior which is not suicidal in nature, among other means of coping with stress. For those presenting the highest risk, it is vitally important that friends who notice that they are depressed let them know that they care, offer support, and encourage them to seek help (see September 21 article for suggestions of what to say or do).
We have found, however, that some students are reluctant to contact the Counseling Center due to the mistaken belief that once a student threatens or attempts suicide, the Counseling Center will almost automatically place them on a leave of absence, whether or not the student wants to take a leave.
The fact of the matter is that the involuntary leave of absence is a rare occurrence and takes place only when the student’s suicide risk remains very high and/or they refuse treatment. Our primary concern is for the safety of the student. In almost all situations the students are willing, if not grateful, for the opportunity to be helped with their depression. Even if a suicide attempt has been a very serious one, if the student is willing to engage in treatment we want to keep them in school, help them decrease the depression and improve their functioning.
Unless there are repeated attempts or threats of suicide, or the student is professionally assessed as being so deeply depressed as to remain a high suicide risk, the Counseling Center does not place them on a leave, or violate their confidentiality. The statistics support this: In the 2004-2005 school year, referred to above, we had 42 students take a leave of absence for psychological reasons, none of them being involuntary. That is a little unusual.
Typically we may have one or two a year. People also think of the involuntary leave as being the equivalent of being expelled from school. In all my years at Rensselaer—which are many—there has only been one person placed on an involuntary leave who sought to return and was denied readmission, and that was because he did not fulfill the treatment requirements. We want to keep students here, and if they take a leave of absence, we want them to return and graduate. So I urge people not to let misconceptions about our policies and practices keep them from getting friends to the Counseling Center or calling us about their concerns. Contacting us may save a life.
A reminder: the Counseling Center will be conducting two sessions of “National Depression Screening Day” in the Great Hall of DCC on Wednesday, October 5 and Friday, October 14 from 12:30-4 pm. At these times, students will have a chance to take a brief depression inventory and go over the results with a Counseling Center staff member.
Joe Albert, Ph.D.
Director, Counseling Center
