"Preventing suicide among university students
NEW YORK: This column is a plea to all current and future university students and their families to deal openly and constructively with emotional, social and academic turmoil that can sometimes have heart-breaking — and usually preventable — consequences.
NEW YORK: This column is a plea to all current and future university students and their families to deal openly and constructively with emotional, social and academic turmoil that can sometimes have heart-breaking — and usually preventable — consequences.
Suicide is the second leading cause of death, after traffic accidents, among university students. For most, it’s their first time living away from home, away from the support and comfort usually provided by good friends and family members. The adjustment can be overwhelming for some students, especially those who don’t make friends easily or who have difficulty meeting the demands of challenging university courses.
Sadly, parents are often unaware of the struggles facing their university-age children, and a federal privacy law often prevents schools from notifying i of serious student difficulties even when faculty members and administrators know about them.
Consider the recent suicide of a Hamilton College student whose parents were unaware of his severe distress even though several professors and the dean knew he was going through “a complete crash and burn,” as one put it.
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974, or FERPA, prevents schools from alerting parents when students are in serious academic trouble unless a parent claims the child as a dependent on tax forms.
There are at least two good ways around limitations colleges face about notifying parents. One is for students to grant college administrators, in advance of any difficulty, permission to contact parents without delay if they are in academic or emotional trouble. The other is for a concerned friend to alert the parents or a trusted family member; no permission is required if the student has provided contact information."
Interesting to note that varsity students in the USA also faced unrelenting pressures of hight academic score fr their parents. Would be great to hv the breakdown of the parents by country of origins or races.
Whatever it is, this article highlighted the need to be alert to the emotional distress of university students in the USA. Maybe some scholars can do similar research to find out how it is in Sgp!
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