Brief
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The Associated Press asked the nation’s 100 largest public universities for student suicide statistics and discovered that the majority of institutions do not track suicide data for their students. Only 46 of the universities reported suicide data. Of the 54 other schools, 43 said they don’t track suicides, nine could provide only limited data and didn’t answer questions about how consistently they tracked suicides, and two didn’t provide statistics.
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Confirming student suicides is a difficult process hindered by family and legal privacy concerns, logistical issues and restrictions on medical records. For example, medical examiners are not required to notify universities and colleges about a student’s cause of death. Moreover, there also are no standards for tracking campus suicide.
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As more students report mental health issues and institutions invest more on mental health support, advocates say the lack of data makes it impossible to measure progress and therefore develop best practices that could save more lives.
Insight
The good news is that more than ever, college and university students are seeking counseling and other mental health services to deal with issues like depression and anxiety. But the bad news is that the stigma associated with mental health problems still is pervasive. Students of color, in particular, face additional stress because of their race and ethnicity, but are also less likely to seek mental health care for the same reasons. Even some faculty members are hesitant to come forward about their mental health struggles.
That stigma could also extend to university staff worried about their institution’s reputation. Collin Binkley, author of the AP report, told the Education Writers Association in an interview that mental health experts were concerned that schools did not want to collect suicide data for concerns over how it might reflect on the institution.
Fear of bad news and concerns about privacy also might point to why schools are not collecting enough data about students and what their needs are generally. For example, Temple University professor Sara Goldrick-Rab, who researches college affordability issues, notes that institutions typically don’t collect basic information on student food insecurity and huger.