Tue, Feb 16, 2016 page7

• MIT students focus brainpower on suicide prevention

  • AP, CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts
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  After seven suicides in two years, students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are looking for their own solutions to prevent more deaths.

  The school unveiled a sweeping plan to bolster mental health last fall, adding staff psychologists and expanding counseling hours, among other measures, but students have added their own ingenuity in recent months, starting a wave of grassroots projects intended to defuse the stress of campus life before it leads to a crisis.

  One group of students this month launched a texting hotline called Lean On Me, letting students chat anonymously with trained student volunteers about anything that is troubling them.

  Other students plan to install artificial light boxes on campus, meant to treat depression that can take hold during dreary months.

  By her count, sophomore Izzy Lloyd has handed out more than 4,000 specially made wristbands that say TMAYD. It is short for “tell me about your day,” a message that aims to get students talking with one another. Lloyd started the project last year after two of her freshman classmates took their own lives in the same week.

  “It’s suicide prevention by community building,” said Lloyd, 19. “We’re showing people who may feel like they have nothing left that they have a world of people who do care about them.”

  Other projects take a lighter tone, like the new MIT Puppy Lab that is scheduled to bring therapy dogs to campus this semester.

  Campus officials recently awarded almost US$50,000 in grants to support campus projects meant to improve mental health. They say the new work is a reflection of MIT’s culture, marked by a drive to solve problems. However, students said they are also meeting a demand for services that were missing on the campus of 11,000 students.

  “If we really solved the problem, we wouldn’t be running into this same cycle of mental illness that we’ve been seeing,” said Nikhil Buduma, who graduated last year and founded Lean On Me with two current students. The hotline, he added, lets students get help anonymously and avoid stigmas tied to mental illness.

  Across the US, experts say, college students are playing a larger role in suicide prevention. And more often, schools welcome that kind of help.

  “We have found time and again that students listen to students before they listen to anyone else,” said Nance Roy, clinical director at the Jed Foundation, a nonprofit group based in New York that works to prevent suicide among college students.

  “These issues can no longer just fall to the counseling center,” Roy said, adding that there is no evidence that elite schools have disproportionately high suicide rates, but a national study suggests that MIT’s rate was above average last year.

  The average suicide rate among college students was seven for every 100,000 students between 2004 and 2009, according to research from the University of Rochester.

  Three MIT students took their lives last year, translating to almost 27 for every 100,000. There have been at least seven student suicides since 2014, reports from the school’s student newspaper said.

  Some students and alumni said that MIT’s culture pushes students to extremes, sometimes at the expense of a social life or emotional health.
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