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Why I Tried To Kill Myself at Penn

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Re: Why I Tried To Kill Myself at Penn

#51

Post by zallarak »

That's sad to hear of a suicide attempt and I hope the author finds peace and stability.

With that said, I am firmly of the opinion that it is not the responsibility of an educational institution to change to accommodate people who find an environment too stressful. If one finds it too difficult or stressful and the institution is providing adequate mental health services (which the author acknowledged), you are simply in an environment you should not be in. Go to a college that is more relaxing. You have hundreds of other options that will be much less stressful. Changing Penn to a less stressful environment would not make it Penn anymore. Lots of people thrive at and enjoy Penn.

I do not mean to sound harsh - it's simply a reality. It just concerns me that the author acknowledges the school makes him/her suicidal yet is unwilling to leave and lays the blame on the school for his/her suicidal attempts.

Re: Why I Tried To Kill Myself at Penn

#52

Post by a8da6b0c91d »

sp332 wrote: post #34
mentalhealth wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suicidal ideation is, in general, not a choice a person makes. It's the result of a combination of depression and lack of inhibition, due to anything ranging from psychosis to extreme anxiety or stress. If you were sufficiently depressed and stressed from being the last person on Earth, you'd most likely commit suicide.

Exactly, so the statement "I tried to kill myself at Penn because I felt so utterly alone." is probably wrong. I mean it's probably subjectively true, and it's informative, but loneliness probably didn't cause this person to attempt suicide.

Why would you doubt that loneliness was the problem? Man is a social mammal and isolation in such animals produces easily measured extreme stress. If unchecked it results in breakdown.

Re: Why I Tried To Kill Myself at Penn

#53

Post by tonydiv »

As someone who just graduated from Penn last May, I feel inclined to comment.

Penn can be a stressful environment, no doubt. Most of the students who attend Penn were at the top of their class in high school. Many dominated in athletics as well. For these reasons, some students are shocked by the level of excellence, and the rigor of some classes.

That said, I would be cautious to generalize this story. I know people who have received help from CAPS, and they are healthy-minded friendly students today. As with any school, the most important thing you can do is join communities or clubs where there is a collective enthusiasm for something outside of class.

As a graduate, I can confidently say I loved Penn, and my peers would say the same. I'm also glad these stories of students are being shared because there is always room for improvement.

Re: Why I Tried To Kill Myself at Penn

#54

Post by Par_Avion »

grannyg00se wrote: post #37

"The night of my suicide attempt I called a friend and told him that I was contemplating suicide. He told me he was sorry and to call a suicide hotline. We have not talked about my suicide attempt since that night. " The word 'friend' is used over ten times referring to some human acquaintance or other but it really seems like this person doesn't have a single real friend.

Good catch. I feel like the author failed to mention this- There might've been a much different conclusion if she had found her niche.

Re: Why I Tried To Kill Myself at Penn

#55

Post by nhashem »

While the OP was focused on Penn (I'm a Penn grad '04, fwiw), I'm sure this is pretty common at a lot of other selective colleges. I wrestled with a lot of the same exact feelings the OP did, although it never quite got so bad for me.

Ultimately I just remember struggling so much with... "identity," if that's the right word for it. Penn basically ended up disproving everything I thought I knew about myself when I was 18. I thought I was a "high achieving" individual, then I was suddenly very average. I thought I was someone that made friends easily, then I found myself on a campus with 11,000 undergrads yet basically felt like I had no friends. I thought my ethnicity was irrelevant because I we now lived in a post-racial America (hah!), but it seemed like so many organizations there defined themselves by socioeconomic or racial lines. I thought I was good at programming, yet I felt so completely lost in my comp sci classes.

It was pretty harrowing feeling like everything I thought I knew about myself was false, and I couldn't figure out what was true, and I was still expected to achieve at a very high level while I was figuring it out. The OP's anecdote about going to Wawa really hit home, because I remember almost literally the same thing happening to me, and that's all it would take to feel like nothing made sense anymore. Am I really the kind of person who doesn't have a single fucking friend out of 11,000 undergrads that would take a 10 minute break to grab a sandwich?

The OP seemed to blame Penn as an institution, and I do think these selective universities could do more to recognize that some of their students will basically feel like they've been abruptly thrown into a crucible, and it's not always painless to adjust. The OP advocates things like publishing suicide rates, but I think that's just another way of advocating, "please tell everyone they don't need to pretend everything is great, because I've felt fucking miserable sometimes and I don't think I'm the only one."

There was a guy in my freshman dorm that basically did "crack" and abruptly withdrew for the semester, and I just remember everyone just kind of smirking about it. "Yeah, Sean went nuts or something. Was spazzing out over a midterm and then next thing I know, all his stuff's packed and he's gone. Guess he couldn't hack it."

I didn't smirk. I just remember feeling sad and wishing Sean had said something to me. Feeling overwhelmed apparently meant "going nuts." Was that fair? That didn't seem fair. I don't think Sean would have thought it was fair either. Maybe we could have gotten a sandwich at Wawa and talked about that.

Re: Why I Tried To Kill Myself at Penn

#56

Post by rnprdk »

tptacek wrote: post #6

Penn’s response? – Sending some administrator to see me in the hospital (HUP). The first and only thing that she said was, “Are we going to make this an annual pattern?” because I had been hospitalized the year before. I said “No” and she gave me her business card. My kids are going to college in a couple of years. How do I avoid sending them to places like this? People expect (and should expect) to be treated better…

I went to Butler University and I struggled much like the Penn student above. Two hospitalizations while there, I believe. Everyone involved there--all the professors I knew, and all the administrators who took on my case--were just exceptionally supportive and kind. They really cared, and they were damned good at what they did. In the end I wouldn't have gotten onto the path of getting better without them--especially my advisor, who intervened in a very personal way that probably took some guts.

Another person suggested small teaching colleges. Seeing as Butler is a 4000-ish person college, maybe there's something to this. But I'd like to think that even in big colleges, the student-health-oriented administrative staff would be on their game. I dunno.

Re: Why I Tried To Kill Myself at Penn

#57

Post by mmxiii »

I knew multiple people at MIT who used the mental health services/therapists there. My impression was that their experience was positive, and that at least someone was there to listen and have a conversation with them.

Re: Why I Tried To Kill Myself at Penn

#58

Post by michaelochurch »

Suicide doesn't usually happen when people are depressed. It happens when they're going into or out of a depression. Think of depression as night; suicide usually happens at evening or morning twilight. More often, the morning twilight. They're getting out of depression, can see the big picture again (when you're depressed, you can't) and realize what a mess their lives are in. They freak out, for lack of a better word. They're not in the throes of depression, but still emotionally unstable. That is when suicide tends to happen.

Society makes it worse by kicking such people when they're down and making it a lot harder for people to pull themselves out of depression and get the recovery they need.

For example, when I missed a midterm exam because I was in the hospital after my suicide attempt, my professor did not allow me to make it up.

See, it's shit like that. One period of illness and now you're playing for a D+. One slip and your life just might be fucked.

Ok, and here's why this will never improve in American society. We run this contest of superficial reliability at relatively easy (intellectually speaking) work, and our corporate overlords are selected based on who drops last. Usually, the culling agent is a short-term episode of anxiety or depression (or "burn out") in a normal person. They're considered "the weak" and pushed aside. That is why our society cannot, on the terms it lives by now, ever accommodate these genuine (and serious) medical problems.

As it's structured now, society is more about competing for position than excellence, and the result of that is that people have to be kicked when they're down.

I would argue for scrapping the whole thing (society, that is), rethinking all assumptions, and gearing our society toward genuine excellence (and toward helping the sick, unconditionally) rather than mindless, senseless competition... but that's just me.

Re: Why I Tried To Kill Myself at Penn

#59

Post by DanBC »

lutusp wrote: post #39
tptacek wrote: post #6

Penn’s response? – Sending some administrator to see me in the hospital (HUP). The first and only thing that she said was, “Are we going to make this an annual pattern?” because I had been hospitalized the year before. I said “No” and she gave me her business card. My kids are going to college in a couple of years. How do I avoid sending them to places like this? People expect (and should expect) to be treated better…

I suggest that you think a bit more deeply about this. It's possible that the administrator was being thoughtless, but there's another interpretation -- it's a bad idea to give suicide attempters too much attention. By responding with too much sympathy, one can become a "suicide enabler", the suicide equivalent of a narcissistic enabler. If a person threatens suicide and gets nothing but attention and sympathy, this…

When someone expresses suicidal ideation you get that person support because suicidal thinking is a risk factor for attempted and completed suicide.

Treating a suicidal person harshly because you don't want to encourage suicidal behaviour is a sub optimal strategy if your aim is to reduce the numbers or people attempting suicide and dying from suicide.

Suicide is a significant cause of death so it's probably a good thing to better understand suicidal thinking and behaviour.

Re: Why I Tried To Kill Myself at Penn

#60

Post by lutusp »

DanBC wrote: post #59
lutusp wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest that you think a bit more deeply about this. It's possible that the administrator was being thoughtless, but there's another interpretation -- it's a bad idea to give suicide attempters too much attention. By responding with too much sympathy, one can become a "suicide enabler", the suicide equivalent of a narcissistic enabler. If a person threatens suicide and gets nothing but attention and sympathy, this…

When someone expresses suicidal ideation you get that person support because suicidal thinking is a risk factor for attempted and completed suicide. Treating a suicidal person harshly because you don't want to encourage suicidal behaviour is a sub optimal strategy if your aim is to reduce the numbers or people attempting suicide and dying from suicide. Suicide is a significant cause of death so it's probably a good t…

> Treating a suicidal person harshly ...

Wait, what? That's not what I said. I'm saying it's a mistake to give too much attention and sympathy to suicidal ideations.

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