Clearing the Air on Suicide


A
few weeks into my second term at MIT, in February of 1996, a sophomore leapt from the fourteenth floor of MacGregor House to her death. I was shocked and dismayed -- and even more so upon learning that this event was of no more interest to most of MIT than the annual Baker House piano drop.

It was suicide. And since then, it's happened again. And again. And again, and again, and again, and again, and again, eight times in five years. 31 times since 1980; four times last year alone. Our classmates hanging, suffocating, drowning, poisoning, hurling, shooting, burning themselves, each time also shattering the lives of family and friends.

Until the 1997 drinking death of Scott S. Krueger '01, suicide was a non-issue at MIT, tacitly accepted, never discussed. But once the media descended on the Institute, wanting to know how one of the world's best and brightest could get himself killed by Captain Morgan, klieg lights and microphones were thrust into every corner of campus. When Philip C. Gale '98 jumped from the Green Building in early 1998 -- the first on-campus suicide since Krueger's death -- the camera crews were there before the blood was dry on Eastman Court.

From then on, suicide has been out in the open, and MIT has finally woken up, has had to wake up, to its stark reality, if only in the face of continuing media interest. Only this month, on Sunday, Feb. 4 and Monday, Feb. 5, the Boston Globe ran two Kruegeresque front-page stories on the topic. Nothing new; media outlets here and around the country, including the Chronicle of Higher Education, have now been talking about MIT suicide for three years.

The situation is unstable, the atmosphere poisoned by antagonism, the campus haunted by its history. Administrators, now presiding over the massive residence-system changes ordered after Krueger, claim they can do nothing to prevent suicides; they are condemned as hypocrites. MIT's mental-health service, citing patient-privacy concerns, is rapped for being inadequate and incompetent. The family of at least one suicide victim is considering legal action against the Institute, no doubt encouraged by last year's astounding $6 million settlement with Krueger's parents. Students rail against everyone and everything -- the administration, MIT Medical, the media.

Fitful steps are finally being taken. In April, not long after spokesman Ken Campbell announced in the Globe MIT's official position on student suicide ­- "There's a lot of evidence that the more you report it, the more they do it" -- Chancellor Lawrence S. Bacow '72, mental-health service chief Dr. Peter Reich, and I met to discuss a more constructive approach. We drew up plans for a mental-health task force, which began meeting in the fall, chaired by David A. Mellis '02 of the Undergraduate Association and Dr. Kristine A. Girard, a psychiatrist at MIT Medical. Chancellor Bacow pledged his full support and promised to implement the task force's eventual recommendations; Mellis, Girard, Reich, and the other task-force members are working to get him some.

In the meantime, the uncomprehending and self-interested continue to shriek, distracting us from the real points. They whine, for instance, that the media is using suicide as an excuse to continue bashing the Institute; after all, MIT's suicide rate may not be higher than the rates at some of its peer institutions, which refuse to divulge their numbers. But numbers are simply not the issue; it should not be MIT's goal merely to keep suicide to the level of its peer institutions. What we should do is seek to get help to the people who need help. The media plays a useful role by ensuring that, this time, the administration doesn't become forgetful.

Getting people the mental-health services they need is complicated. Therapists must be viewed as helpful, not hostile. MIT Medical's concerns about privacy are well-founded for that reason; students must be free to seek mental-health treatment without fear that caregivers will, for instance, call their parents, who may have thought everything up at MIT was hunky-dory.

But concern for privacy is no reason to withhold mental-health care. Therapists have to be better connected with and responsive to students in order to be of any help -- nobody who calls the mental-health service in the throes of possibly suicidal depression should be made to wait days or weeks for an appointment. And once care is arranged, it should be high-quality, effective care. Surely those in charge realize that poor care does service neither to the patient nor to the medical staff.

Improved mental-health treatment need not involve hardline medical tactics; mental health should instead be treated, at least in part, as a characteristic of the community, not merely of the individual. MIT admins' thankful muzzling of Ken Campbell is a first step toward eliminating the stigma associated with the entire issue of mental health. If conversation is encouraged, and the MIT community begins to open up and to actually function as a community, people will not be discouraged by their peers from seeking the help they may really need. Outreach and community-building activities of any sort -- sponsored by MIT Medical, dorms, student groups, or even the administration itself, as in the case of the 1997 Infinite Buffet -- can go a long way toward breaking down barriers.

Nearly all students need the support and encouragement of a community to succeed and thrive at MIT. That some may help actually surviving the place is only a slight difference of degree.

Does this mean that MIT itself is partially to blame for suicides? Only in the sense that more could be done to try to help people, more could be done to try to energize and knit together the MIT community. Yes, the Institute can be a tough place, but it is not as a rule a pressure cooker that pushes its students over the edge. Administrators will probably be relieved that I think it would be tough to blame MIT in court for a student's suicide (barring, of course, outright medical negligence or malpractice).

The task force now at work is at long last taking the community view of mental health at MIT. I am confident that the measures they ultimately recommend to Chancellor Bacow will go a long way toward not only improving the health care available to students, but also toward improving the general atmosphere on campus. Suicide is deadlier when it's a dirty secret; clearing the air will help us all breathe easier.

Statistical research relevant to this column was carried out by Katharyn M. Jeffreys '01.



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plosky@alum.mit.edu
20 february 2001