Mental health articles

Protective factors of suicide Protective factors are believed to enhance resilience and counterbalance risk factors (U.S. DHHS, 2001). Promoting healthy behaviors and protecting students from health risks are some of the preventive interventions available to college students (Silverman et al., 1997). College campuses provide student support services, including easy and lowcost access to physical and […]

Warning signs of suicide Many risk factors are historical or immutable, and hence not targets of intervention, such as age, gender, race/ethnicity, and family history of psychiatric illness. Therefore attention has focused on elucidating warning signs of acute risk (Rudd, 2003; Rudd et al., in press). Verbal warning signs are as follows: “I’m thinking of […]

Although true one-to-one causation is diffi cult to establish, certain risk factors, alone or in combination, are associated with increased risk for suicidal behaviors and completed suicides. Due to the overlap in age between adolescents and college students, the risk factors for adolescents also generally apply to college students. Recently a major report on treating […]

suicidal ideation assessment The American College Health Association (ACHA) conducted the Spring 2000 National College Health Assessment (NCHA), which, along with other health indicators, measured depression, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts among 15,977 college students on 28 campuses (ACHA, 2001). Its fi ndings were comparable to the National College Health Risk Behavior Survey (NCHRBS) conducted […]

college students suicide rate In 2000, there were approximately 2,775 four-year colleges and 2,000 community or junior colleges in the United States, enrolling approximately 15 million students (U.S. Department of Education, 2002). One fourth of all persons aged 18–24 in the United States are either full- or part-time college students—an age group with a high […]

There is no more painful disruption to the structure of campus life than that caused by a student suicide. A suicide brings to a halt the daily patterns of teaching, research, and scholarship that defi ne college life, and calls into question a campus’s safety, security, and stability (Silverman, 2005a). Greater awareness of the rate […]