8 ms·

Caltech's going through a bad period: 3 suicides in 3 months

35 points by TriinT 17y ago

ryanwaggoner 17y ago
Two things: 1. Perhaps I missed his explanation, but for two of those, it sounded like cause of death had not been determined yet. 2. Can someone run through the math here for me to indicate that this is statistically significant? According to Suicide.org, suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death for college students, and thousands kill themselves every year, so doesn't it seem like sooner or later, several of them would happen within a few months of each other on the same campus? I don't mean to sound insensitive at all. I'm sure the families and friends of the deceased are devastated, but I just wonder if this is really a pattern or just an unfortunate coincidence.
- shard 17y ago
  I can't help with the statistics, but one thing to note is that Caltech is a small school. There are likely to be only around two thousand students total, including both undergraduate and graduate students.
- brandnewlow 17y ago
  As a former university employee, I'd say what's odd here isn't that 3 people committed suicide at CalTech, it's that they did it so closely together. These things happen at schools. I don't the stats myself, but thousands of times each year doesn't sound too far off. But at a place like Cal Tech, when this happens once, the school DROPS THE HAMMER on the student body for a time to try and head it off from happening again. At Princeton, where I went to school and worked, that meant a flood of counselors, town hall meetings in all the dorms, a spate of articles in the papers, etc. Wall to wall discussion to make sure that if you know someone who's struggling, they get some help. This emphasis fades of course, and who knows how effective it really is, but I do know that numbers at the counseling centers would shoot up for a time as students were encouraged and felt comfortable seeking help. So if you run a school and this happens three times in 3 months, I imagine the administration would be pretty upset and worried.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    Interesting, that suggests that there is a sawtooth curve to the number of suicides. If that's true the conclusion might be that 'preventative counseling' is at too low levels where there has not been a recent crisis.
    - ggruschow 17y ago
      .. unless the expected suicides are a lower cost to society than the preventative counseling. Perhaps the clamp down is an overreaction. I doubt it's an efficiently designed mechanism to keep the costs even. There's always some limit to how much we'll spend trying to prevent things from happening. For instance, you could tie people together in groups of 3 to reduce the successful suicide rate. I think most people would rather allow some suicides than take 2 people to the bathroom with them, or for that matter, getting dragged into monitor 2 others' trips to the bathroom. You could also argue whether all suicides cost society.
      - jacquesm 17y ago
        It's a classic PID controller issue, not to put a technical slant on a tragedy, but if a mechanism oscillates like that chances are that you can 'dampen' the oscillations by choosing your parameters with more care. I find it hard to think of this in terms as 'cost to society', there is something very creepy about that. Every death is a tragedy, and suicides because of a lack of counseling (and for instance an excess in pressure to perform) seem to me to be a total waste.
        ggruschow 17y ago
        I agree about the parameters, mostly. Only gotcha is the Influence/Cialdini reference someone rightly made, which may indicate that no change may be required. I find it easier to think about in terms of 'cost to society.' See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectualization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectualization .. which of course I only learned about in counseling. I value it a lot. However, I only skimmed through, but I didn't see a claim that these cases were "because of a lack of counseling."
- arebop 17y ago
  Some statistical analysis of university suicides can be found in Is Suicide at MIT a Poisson Process (http://philip.greenspun.com/research/suicide-at-mit.pdf http://philip.greenspun.com/research/suicide-at-mit.pdf).
- cdibona 17y ago
  Another data point, schizophrenia, and certain other brain chemistry issues, tend to appear in the late teens and early twenties. Here's some medline for you: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/schizophrenia.html http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/schizophrenia.html There is another cluster of suicides from men in their mid 30s, from what I understand.
- psyklic 17y ago
  1. All three were unfortunately suicides, confirmed later (though not always through official press release). 2. They are likely statistically significant -- the average rate seems to be about 2-3 per 20000 students per year. Caltech is only 2000 students, so that would make it already 30 per 20000 per year. 3. One student was very socially engaged, president of his House. The second student passed away only a few days before the commencement ceremonies, where he would walk. The third did so over the summer. As can be imagined, these have had a huge effect on such a small community.
movix 17y ago
"Alan Turing took his life by a poisoned apple" - isn't there some story about the fact that because Apple has a bite out of it's logo, that it's in fact a tribute to Turing - or is that just a myth?
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- jacquesm 17y ago
  http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=103;t=000628;p=0 http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_to...
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
tdm911 17y ago
The high school I attended (10 years ago) has had 4 students commit suicide in the last 6 months. Western Heights College in Geelong, Australia has a student population of around half of Caltech's. This has made major headlines in the Australian press and has raised concerns about the education systems ability to deal with student depression and the effects of it. Copy cat behaviour has been suggested also. Unfortunately, apart from the obvious grief the students have experienced, they have also had to put up with TV crews trying to enter the school and taking every opportunity to speak with students who are quite likely not equipped to deal with the difficult circumstances they are faced with.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
jimboyoungblood 17y ago
Did anyone else notice that all three were Asian males?
- krakensden 17y ago
  It's CalTech, not Tuskegee- Asian males are a large chunk of the population.
  - chriseppstein 17y ago
    It's Caltech. Not CalTech.
  - jimboyoungblood 17y ago
    Yes, it's Caltech- where white males are a larger chunk of the population. Yet they don't seem to be killing themselves at a proportional rate. That was my question. Anyway, http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=c2b8f3a43bbe3e0445f23274028d24a7 http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?artic...
c0nsilience 17y ago
Not trying to be racist here, but all three suicides were by Asian students. I just find that to be a little odd. I live in Pasadena and have been on CalTech's campus several times - I wouldn't exactly say that the majority of students there are Asian.
dhbradshaw 17y ago
Remember Freakonomics? According to the book, suicides are contagious. After widely reported suicides the rate of freak car accidents that kill only the driver goes up.
chriseppstein 17y ago
I graduated from Caltech. The suicide rate there used to be worse, especially among incoming freshmen who, after being in the top 0.1% of their classes, suddenly find themselves normally distributed for the first time and getting not A+'s. This is why incoming freshmen take their first quarter pass/fail and their second quarter with "shadow" grades. The school itself is very challenging, much more so than even the closest competitor (MIT). Students there are generally exhausted from working hard and playing hard and there is a culture of depression and self-loathing there. I was generally surprised to not see more suicides there to be honest.

35 points by TriinT 17y ago

Two things: 1. Perhaps I missed his explanation, but for two of those, it sounded like cause of death had not been determined yet. 2. Can someone run through the math here for me to indicate that this is statistically significant? According to Suicide.org, suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death for college students, and thousands kill themselves every year, so doesn't it seem like sooner or later, several of them would happen within a few months of each other on the same campus? I don't mean to sound insensitive at all. I'm sure the families and friends of the deceased are devastated, but I just wonder if this is really a pattern or just an unfortunate coincidence.

shard 17y ago
I can't help with the statistics, but one thing to note is that Caltech is a small school. There are likely to be only around two thousand students total, including both undergraduate and graduate students.
brandnewlow 17y ago
As a former university employee, I'd say what's odd here isn't that 3 people committed suicide at CalTech, it's that they did it so closely together. These things happen at schools. I don't the stats myself, but thousands of times each year doesn't sound too far off. But at a place like Cal Tech, when this happens once, the school DROPS THE HAMMER on the student body for a time to try and head it off from happening again. At Princeton, where I went to school and worked, that meant a flood of counselors, town hall meetings in all the dorms, a spate of articles in the papers, etc. Wall to wall discussion to make sure that if you know someone who's struggling, they get some help. This emphasis fades of course, and who knows how effective it really is, but I do know that numbers at the counseling centers would shoot up for a time as students were encouraged and felt comfortable seeking help. So if you run a school and this happens three times in 3 months, I imagine the administration would be pretty upset and worried.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  Interesting, that suggests that there is a sawtooth curve to the number of suicides. If that's true the conclusion might be that 'preventative counseling' is at too low levels where there has not been a recent crisis.
  - ggruschow 17y ago
    .. unless the expected suicides are a lower cost to society than the preventative counseling. Perhaps the clamp down is an overreaction. I doubt it's an efficiently designed mechanism to keep the costs even. There's always some limit to how much we'll spend trying to prevent things from happening. For instance, you could tie people together in groups of 3 to reduce the successful suicide rate. I think most people would rather allow some suicides than take 2 people to the bathroom with them, or for that matter, getting dragged into monitor 2 others' trips to the bathroom. You could also argue whether all suicides cost society.
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      It's a classic PID controller issue, not to put a technical slant on a tragedy, but if a mechanism oscillates like that chances are that you can 'dampen' the oscillations by choosing your parameters with more care. I find it hard to think of this in terms as 'cost to society', there is something very creepy about that. Every death is a tragedy, and suicides because of a lack of counseling (and for instance an excess in pressure to perform) seem to me to be a total waste.
      - ggruschow 17y ago
        I agree about the parameters, mostly. Only gotcha is the Influence/Cialdini reference someone rightly made, which may indicate that no change may be required. I find it easier to think about in terms of 'cost to society.' See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectualization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectualization .. which of course I only learned about in counseling. I value it a lot. However, I only skimmed through, but I didn't see a claim that these cases were "because of a lack of counseling."
arebop 17y ago
Some statistical analysis of university suicides can be found in Is Suicide at MIT a Poisson Process (http://philip.greenspun.com/research/suicide-at-mit.pdf http://philip.greenspun.com/research/suicide-at-mit.pdf).
cdibona 17y ago
Another data point, schizophrenia, and certain other brain chemistry issues, tend to appear in the late teens and early twenties. Here's some medline for you: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/schizophrenia.html http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/schizophrenia.html There is another cluster of suicides from men in their mid 30s, from what I understand.
psyklic 17y ago
1. All three were unfortunately suicides, confirmed later (though not always through official press release). 2. They are likely statistically significant -- the average rate seems to be about 2-3 per 20000 students per year. Caltech is only 2000 students, so that would make it already 30 per 20000 per year. 3. One student was very socially engaged, president of his House. The second student passed away only a few days before the commencement ceremonies, where he would walk. The third did so over the summer. As can be imagined, these have had a huge effect on such a small community.

movix 17y ago

"Alan Turing took his life by a poisoned apple" - isn't there some story about the fact that because Apple has a bite out of it's logo, that it's in fact a tribute to Turing - or is that just a myth?

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
jacquesm 17y ago
http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=103;t=000628;p=0 http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_to...
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

tdm911 17y ago

The high school I attended (10 years ago) has had 4 students commit suicide in the last 6 months. Western Heights College in Geelong, Australia has a student population of around half of Caltech's. This has made major headlines in the Australian press and has raised concerns about the education systems ability to deal with student depression and the effects of it. Copy cat behaviour has been suggested also. Unfortunately, apart from the obvious grief the students have experienced, they have also had to put up with TV crews trying to enter the school and taking every opportunity to speak with students who are quite likely not equipped to deal with the difficult circumstances they are faced with.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

jimboyoungblood 17y ago

Did anyone else notice that all three were Asian males?

krakensden 17y ago
It's CalTech, not Tuskegee- Asian males are a large chunk of the population.
- chriseppstein 17y ago
  It's Caltech. Not CalTech.
- jimboyoungblood 17y ago
  Yes, it's Caltech- where white males are a larger chunk of the population. Yet they don't seem to be killing themselves at a proportional rate. That was my question. Anyway, http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=c2b8f3a43bbe3e0445f23274028d24a7 http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?artic...

c0nsilience 17y ago

Not trying to be racist here, but all three suicides were by Asian students. I just find that to be a little odd. I live in Pasadena and have been on CalTech's campus several times - I wouldn't exactly say that the majority of students there are Asian.

dhbradshaw 17y ago

Remember Freakonomics? According to the book, suicides are contagious. After widely reported suicides the rate of freak car accidents that kill only the driver goes up.

chriseppstein 17y ago

I graduated from Caltech. The suicide rate there used to be worse, especially among incoming freshmen who, after being in the top 0.1% of their classes, suddenly find themselves normally distributed for the first time and getting not A+'s. This is why incoming freshmen take their first quarter pass/fail and their second quarter with "shadow" grades. The school itself is very challenging, much more so than even the closest competitor (MIT). Students there are generally exhausted from working hard and playing hard and there is a culture of depression and self-loathing there. I was generally surprised to not see more suicides there to be honest.