For Ted, it was a scary experience but not wholly unanticipated, as he had already helped some freshman and sophomore advisees through emotional issues ranging from relationship troubles to severe depression. The student returned that night, unharmed the next day, Ted and the dean of the residential college convinced him to get help at the counseling center. Ted immediately went to search for the student, only to find that he had left the dorm. Ted, a senior who is a resident adviser, recalls a late night last year when he received an e-mail message from one of his advisees, alerting him that another student in the college someone Ted knew was not adjusting very well was thinking of suicide. Resident advisers students themselves trained by the counseling center to be alert for signs of depression and illness frequently serve as first-responders when their younger college mates run into trouble. He ultimately took a year off to receive intensive and successful therapy near his home. When he started coming up with suicide plans, friends took him to the dean of his college, who suggested he go to McCosh Health Center. Andrew improved, but the sophomore-year bicker process and room draw, in which he was excluded by friends, caused a mental breakdown.
A friend referred him to a local psychiatrist, who prescribed an antidepressant.
I had never really dealt with rejection. That changed in his freshman year, when a coed fraternity turned him down. (The real names of students interviewed for this article are not used.) A self-confessed golden boy in high school who earned straight As, swam on the school team, and was president of all the clubs, Andrew says, I had always gotten what I wanted. About 40 percent of all Princeton undergraduates use the counseling center at some point.Īndrew, a Princeton senior, was one of them. In the year ending June 30, 2001, the last year for which figures were available, 276 Princeton students were referred by the counseling center to psychiatrists, a 46 percent increase over the previous year, and two-thirds of those students were placed on medication. Last year Gellers staff met with 1,100 students with problems ranging from the situational, such as dealing with parents divorce or a death in the family, to serious mental illness including severe depression, anxiety disorder, and bipolar disorder. Geller (pictured), the soft-spoken, gray-bearded man who has directed Princetons counseling services since 1968. The number of students using Princetons counseling center has climbed 30 percent in the last two years, according to clinical psychologist Marvin H. Dickerson has been keeping a close eye on Princetons mental health programs, including medical care and parental notification policies, for the last two years, since it became clear that the need for mental health services had increased.Īs it has on most campuses, especially elite campuses, the demand for services and care at Princeton is swelling a result of the academic and social pressures on stressed-out students unaccustomed to failure, a growing student awareness of mental illness, and in some cases, new psychotropic medications that allow students with previously diagnosed mental illness to manage the disease and attend college when that would have been impossible in the past. (Shins death, believed to be one of about 1,000 suicides on campuses that year, has been in the spotlight largely because of the manner in which she killed herself and the issues raised by her parents lawsuit.) Mental health is on everyones mind, says Janet Smith Dickerson, Princetons vice president for campus life. Nationally, suicide is the second-leading cause of death among college-age students, after motor-vehicle accidents. campus and universities across the country, but college administrators already knew that mental health was a growing campus problem. The tragedy and the questions it raised shook the M.I.T. for $27 million, claiming the university did not inform them of Elizabeths steep deterioration in the months leading to her death.
After her death, her parents who had been notified about the suicide attempt in Shins first year filed a wrongful death suit against M.I.T. Friends and administrators knew that she had cut herself and purchased sleeping pills, and helped her get treatment. She drifted in and out of the mental health service. As a freshman, she tried to commit suicide by taking 15 Tylenol-with-codeine tablets. Shin, a sociable, overachieving 19-year-old, had teetered on the edge of emotional stability for two years. On an April night two years ago, a young woman named Elizabeth Shin set herself on fire and burned to death in her dorm room at M.I.T. On campuses, growing concern about mental health
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