STRUGGLING
in SILENCE:
Suicide on CMU's Campus
The causes and trends of suicide in college students
By Patricia Alvord, Olivia Gentile, Danielle Beeler and Erick Fredendall
November 8, 2014: Police responded to reports of a person with a gun on the tracks near West Hall (pictured). The individual died from a single, self-inflicted wound to the chest and marked one of the first completed suicide attempts on campus in several years.
For a few hours every week, Central Michigan University graduate student Caitlin Mosley talks people through some of their darkest moments.
Between a part-time job, an internship at CMU’s Counseling Center and graduate courses, Mosley volunteers as a crisis counselor at the Crisis Text Line, a 24/7 crisis-intervention hotline conducted entirely through text messaging.
Over 66 million messages have passed through this service since its launch in 2013. The messages range from issues like physical abuse and loneliness to self-harm and suicide.
According to the Crisis Text Line’s database, Michigan is the 23rd state in the US when ranked for crises related to suicide. The organization also track the frequently used words used in suicide crises texts, including one word that appears high on the list — school.
For Mosley, whose internship and volunteer experience puts her on the frontlines of mental health on college campuses, she said she personally believes there is an increase in need.
“Numbers at the counseling center have steadily increased for years.“ Mosley said. “Whether this is because mental health issues are increasing or because there is less stigma to see help, I’m not sure.”
Suicide on CMU’s campus
As universities in the U.S. attempt to balance students mental health needs with staff and resources, suicide attempts continue to increase in frequency on a national and local level.
At CMU, the rate of suicide attempts on campus has risen each year since 2013, with seven attempts in 2013 and 24 in 2017. The highest concentration of attempts were located in Larzelere Hall, a residence hall in the northern part of campus serving as the home for CMU honors students.
Overall, CMU Police have filed 83 reports involving suicidal behavior or attempts that occurred on campus since 2013. From the 83, one succeeded and the individual involved wasn’t a CMU student. This doesn't include reports that take place off-campus.
According to the American College Health Association, suicide is the second most common cause of death for college students and first for college freshmen.
“We’re lucky,” said Anthony Voisin, CMU’s vice president of student services. “There’s been very few situations – I can count on one hand [completed suicides] over the course of 38 years.”
Voisin said a focus for mental health services on campus is to provide preventative resources to students before suicide attempts occur.
“It [suicide] is not in and of itself the underlying problem — it’s an action that individuals who are in crisis, it’s an option they sometimes take,” Voisin said.
A national survey of counseling center directors by the American College Counseling Association indicated why university mental health services consider preemptive measures are important: 86 percent of students who died by suicide did not seek campus counseling prior to their deaths.
One of the methods the university employs to identify at-risk students are Care Reports — a university-wide initiative that provides a means for concerned individuals to file a report to the university regarding a student, faculty or staff member who may be having mental health issues.
In the 14-15 academic year spanning from August to May, 129 reports were passed on to the Care Team. A year later, it rose to 197, and to 277 in the following year. Last fall semester alone, over 350 people filed reports on the Care Line, with over 600 reports filed to date in the 17-18 academic year.
This is a stark contrast to the 50 reports per year that used to come through the line six or seven years ago, Voisin said.
As reports continue to flood the Care Team, Counseling Center and residence counselors with requests for mental health assistance, university employees find themselves increasingly overwhelmed with the rise in needs for mental health services.
“It’s a national phenomenon,” Voisin said. “Students are coming in much more anxious.”
Voisin said part of the reason is due to differences between generations. He cited resources he’s read suggesting generations like the baby boomers tended to stigmatize getting mental health services, but that those rules don’t apply to newer generations.
“From a national point of view, counseling centers and counselors are saying that we can’t staff our way out of this,” Voisin said.
The university currently employs seven full-time counselors and two-part time counselors, alongside a handful of trainees. In 2017, the Counseling Center provided service to 1,214 students.
Anthony Voisin
Associate Vice President Student Affairs
"Will there be students who take their life in the future? Absolutely. I don’t think we’re going to get away from it. Do I anticipate an influx of students? I don’t think I can anticipate. Does it worry me? Yes. I’m the guy that has to contact the family or be in contact with the family. We’re the office that sends the notice, sends the flowers to the funeral. It’s not a fun part of my job, so I worry about it."
Availability of the center fluctuates and is dependent on several factors. High pressure periods in the semester like midterms usually have the center seeing a rise in appointments. In spring, the counseling center generally sees a decline in use. The busiest period for the center is the fall, especially halfway through the semester in October and November.
The center serves as a short-term, time-limited mental health resource for students on CMU's campus, intended to be the first phase of treatment for students in need. Around 66 percent of students in the last 6 years have been seen for an average of 1-5 appointments, which is comparable to other U.S. university counseling centers.
"What CMU is seeing and experiencing is not really any different from what other institutions are," Voisin said.
At CMU, university mental services are beginning to recognize the need for other forms of counseling beyond the one-on-one student to counselor sessions, making them consider alternative counseling models like group therapy in the hopes of being able to service the growing need for their services.
"I can’t tell you exactly what that’s going to be now because we’re still working on it, but we can’t meet the need of students who want to have an individual, one-on- one appointment with a counselor continuously," Voisin said. "We don’t have enough counselors to do that. No one is has enough counselors to do that."
The new service model is expected to be in place by the fall 2018 semester.
"Individuals who might see suicide as an option would probably be experiencing issues with anxiety and with depression. Mainly surrounding the fact that they are outside of their normal environment, they don't really know what they are doing in a sense of how to adapt effectively, and they have a lot of standards set upon them. You have to make a lot of decisions as a college student immediately that impact your whole life."
- Sean Feehery, CMU alum and mental health therapist
The breaking point
In a radio interview following the suicide of 14 year-old, Dave Opalewski, a retired CMU professor and grief counselor was asked “what’s wrong with today’s kids?”
“I got very upset, and said ‘why don’t you start asking the right questions?’ The question we should ask is why did a 14-year-old boy feel he couldn’t come to one of us with his problem? Opalewski said.
Over the 11 years Opalewski taught at CMU, he helped several students experiencing suicidal crisis and noticed several trends in the students who would walk into his office to talk about the feelings that they were experiencing.
Transitioning from a high school environment to a university, leaving loved ones, partying, drug and alcohol use, lack of proper sleep, increased reading loads and overwhelming classes are just a few of the circumstances Opalewski saw struggling students deal with.
Family crisis, like divorces that occur after the student left home, were another situation he encountered with students who had suicidal thoughts.
Opaleski described the shock young students experience moving from high school to college a "big fish in a small pond realizing it was a plankton in the ocean." Sean Feehery, a mental health therapist and CMU alum has a more straightforward way to describe it.
“In plain words, college is really hard,” said Feehery.
Sean Feehery completed his undergraduate degree from CMU in 2014. He graduated with a major in psychology and a minor in human development. He then went on to complete his masters in counseling, also from CMU, in 2016.
Feehery said that when he worked for counseling services at CMU he believed they did a good job supporting students and making them aware of the services they offered.
But Feehery also sees that students are seeking mental health services at a greater rate than in the past.
“In general, mental health has been less stigmatized and more supported than it has been in the past,” Feehery said. “It isn't perfect, but it is better. I would think more students are able to feel comfortable with coming forward and addressing the mental health issues instead of having to suffer through them.”
The Center for Collegiate Mental Health at Penn State published a report in 2016 stating anxiety and depression are the most common concerns for students. The number of students visiting campus counseling centers for depression and anxiety have slightly but persistently increased year after year for the last six years — a trend that can also be seen in the increasing suicide rate for college-aged student over the same stretch of time.
Suicide is often correlated with anxiety and depression, feelings that, Feehery said, are often found in younger college students who are having trouble adapting to the new environment.
“You have to make a lot of decisions as a college student immediately that impact your whole life,” Feehery said. “That’s a lot to put on someone’s shoulders and if they aren't properly supported to make these decisions effectively, they could see suicide as the only way out.”