Depression and Suicide Among College Students
There are two groups of students on a college campus according to Purdue University. There are students who already have mental health conditions and students who develop mental health problems. “Suicidal crises are a common occurrence on college campuses," says Chris Brownson, director of the University of Texas Counseling and Mental Health Center in Austin and one of the study's researchers. Suicide takes the lives of 30,000 Americans every year. For people of ages fifteen to twenty-four years-old, suicide is the third leading cause of death. Fifteen percent of them who are clinically depressed end up dying by suicide. The strongest risk factor for suicide is depression. Suicide rates among youth (ages 15-24) have increase more than 200% in the last fifty years.
The National Institute of Mental Health says more than ninety percent of college students who commit suicide suffer from the mental illness called depression. Most people in college who committed suicide had a treatable mental illness. When diagnosed and treated, the individual is depressed, cannot learn to control their depression, and figure out skills that can stop them from falling to the effects of depression and resulting in committing suicide. Depression is a significant risk factor for suicide. Suicide rates among youth fifteen to twenty-four year olds have increased by two hundred percent in the last fifty years. Suicide is the eleventh leading cause of death in the U.S. (CDC) Depression affects more than nineteen million American adults ages eighteen and over each year, which is nearly ten percent of American adults. Over four thousand people aged fifteen to twenty-four years-old die by suicide each year in the United States. In states where the minimum drinking age was raised from eighteen to twenty-one, the suicide rate for eighteen to twenty year olds decreased. On college campuses, suicide is considered the second leading cause of death for college students, preceded by accidents first.
Data points out that the suicide rate is between six point five and seven point five for every hundred thousand-college students. Between forty and fifty percent of these same students report multiple episodes of serious suicidal thoughts. Students reported suicidal behavior was a consequence of drinking. Four point five percent seriously thought about suicide, and one point three percent tried to commit suicide. Studies say that people with depression are twenty times more likely to commit suicide, and those that have attempted suicide before are thirty eight percent are most likely going to attempt it again in the future.
College students are at a major risk for depression and suicide. They went from growing up and going to school in one place all your life, to going to a completely different place