An intensified effort to curb college-student suicides

By BRITTANY ANAS
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Family photo albums and living-room frames hold pictures of Tieg Baker: a blond boy with a golden tan, playing in the sand; No. 27 on the Boulder (Colo.) High football team, black paint under his eyes; a college sophomore on a camping trip, smiling with a visor turned backward and mountains behind him.

One of the last photos of the 22-year-old shows him hugging his golden retriever outside his family's Boulder home, a picture taken for Christmas cards. Six months later, the University of Colorado student left a final note on his girlfriend's doorstep and headed up Flagstaff Road, where his body was later found at the bottom of a rock formation.

Between two and four CU students commit suicide every year, which is consistent with the national average, according to the university. Significantly more students think about ending their lives, as shown in a study by The National College Health Risk Behavior Study, which found that 11.4 percent of those surveyed have "seriously considered" suicide.

Efforts to curb college-student suicides and stamp out stigmas surrounding mental illness have intensified nationally.

Even MTV is joining the cause.

This month, mtvU _ MTV's 24-hour college television channel _ announced the launch of a massive campaign to reduce campus suicides. It has teamed up with the Jed Foundation, a nonprofit considered to be a leading college-suicide prevention group.

College students are not considered the highest risk group for suicide. Statistics show that its suicide rate is half that of other youths in the same age range who are not pursuing a degree.

But the increased focus on campus suicide prevention comes at a time when college counseling centers are seeing more students with intense mental-health problems.

Last year's National Survey of Counseling Directors found that 90 percent of directors at college counseling centers saw an increase in the number of students with severe psychological problems.

Robert Gallagher, the study's author, says that improvements in medications over the past decade or so have allowed students with mental-health disorders to attend college. Before the 1990s, bipolar disorders, severe depression and schizophrenia made college less accessible for affected students.

Nearly all young adults who commit suicide have at least one diagnosable psychiatric illness, according to the Jed Foundation.

Tieg Baker was a junior studying chemistry at CU. A standout high-school linebacker, he had played a year of football for the Buffs after walking on to the team.

He was outgoing and seemed happy, said Cindy Baker, his mother.

But Tieg also suffered a bout of depression in high school and visited mental-health professionals as a teenager and college student. Before enrolling at CU, he cut himself off from prescribed medication because he didn't like the way it made him feel, Cindy Baker said.

Hours before Tieg Baker committed suicide on June 17, 2005, he called his mother and told her he needed to borrow her Costco card. She said she would leave it out for him because she was getting ready to go on a hike, and Tieg asked that she wait for him to swing by.

"He got out of the car, said 'Mom, you're such a good mom.' Then he grabbed me around the waist, gave me a huge kiss and swung me around and around," Cindy Baker said.

He was jubilant, Baker said, but her son's seeming rush of happiness was likely because he knew he was about to end his pain.

"That's something really important for people to know," Baker said. "It's really common that right before a child takes his life that he's really happy."

Major life transitions _ such as leaving home to go away to college _ may intensify existing psychological problems or set off new ones, according to a report from the Suicide Prevention Resource Center prepared for colleges and universities.

Higher academic expectations also can deepen depression or heighten anxiety, it says, and graduate students might face extra stressors that include mounting financial burdens, worries about being out of the work force and uncertainties about the future job market.

Experts say depression and suicide have common warning signs: sadness or anxiety; guilty feelings; helplessness or hopelessness; trouble eating or sleeping; withdrawing from friends or social activities; loss of interest in hobbies, work or school; anger; and increased alcohol consumption or drug use.

Signs that ring the alarm on suicidal thoughts include talking about it openly or saying indirect things about "wanting out" or "ending it all." People considering suicide also may take unnecessary or life-threatening risks, or start giving away personal possessions.

Colleges nationwide have adopted creative programs and experimented with policies.

Harvard University, for one, offered free iPods to students who showed up to a campus depression screening. The University of Rochester assigned volunteer faculty members to groups of freshmen to demystify professors and have informal and fun outings.

And a suicide-prevention program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has gained national attention by making counseling assessment sessions mandatory. Almost two decades of data suggest that doing so has helped reduce the rate of student suicide by more than half _ while the national rate has remained roughly constant, according to the university.

(Contact Boulder Daily Camera staff writer Brittany Anas at anasb(at)dailycamera.com.)