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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

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."
    - 17y ago
- prakash 17y ago
  what's odd here isn't that 3 people committed suicide at CalTech, it's that they did it so closely together. Actually, it's not odd at all. Robert Cialdini mentions this as "Social Proof". From Page 146 of Influence: "Phillips also found that this tendency for suicides to beget suicides occurred principally in those parts of the country where the first suicide was highly publicized and that the wider the publicity given the first suicide, the greater the number of later suicides." On Page 148, there is a chart that shows "Fluctuation in number of suicides before, during and after month of suicide story". So, apparently, the right thing to do is NOT TO publicize the first suicide! Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion on Amazon: http://bit.ly/yXKwu http://bit.ly/yXKwu
  - mechanical_fish 17y ago
    Yes, it's true -- people who are thinking of committing suicide are more likely to do so after hearing about someone else who commits suicide. (This is also true for other acts, like murder-suicides.) There's a lot of research on this. But it doesn't necessarily follow that the right response is to try to cover up suicides. For one thing, people who are at Caltech are bound to hear of anyone who commits suicide at Caltech. For another, it's hard to cover up anything that happens to someone, particularly a young person, in the era of Facebook and Twitter. Third, counseling can actually work for those who get the counseling. Most suicidal people can be helped by one strategy or another: cognitive-behavioral therapy, antidepressant drugs... even just frank discussion can help. Remember, a large number of suicide attempts (in the USA, at any rate, and especially among women) aren't actually meant to succeed. Just because the phrase "a cry for help" is a hopeless cliche doesn't mean that most suicides are not, in fact, cries for help. And, of course, even if some genius psychometrician crunched numbers on all the above scenarios and concluded that the best response to a suicide would be a coverup and the silent treatment... nobody would believe it, and the school would get hammered, in public and in court, for trying such a policy. After all, the same aspects of culture that recognize many suicide attempts as desperate last-ditch cries for help also recognize that the appropriate response of your friends and family is to... offer help.
    - prakash 17y ago
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.

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."
  - 17y ago
prakash 17y ago
what's odd here isn't that 3 people committed suicide at CalTech, it's that they did it so closely together. Actually, it's not odd at all. Robert Cialdini mentions this as "Social Proof". From Page 146 of Influence: "Phillips also found that this tendency for suicides to beget suicides occurred principally in those parts of the country where the first suicide was highly publicized and that the wider the publicity given the first suicide, the greater the number of later suicides." On Page 148, there is a chart that shows "Fluctuation in number of suicides before, during and after month of suicide story". So, apparently, the right thing to do is NOT TO publicize the first suicide! Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion on Amazon: http://bit.ly/yXKwu http://bit.ly/yXKwu
- mechanical_fish 17y ago
  Yes, it's true -- people who are thinking of committing suicide are more likely to do so after hearing about someone else who commits suicide. (This is also true for other acts, like murder-suicides.) There's a lot of research on this. But it doesn't necessarily follow that the right response is to try to cover up suicides. For one thing, people who are at Caltech are bound to hear of anyone who commits suicide at Caltech. For another, it's hard to cover up anything that happens to someone, particularly a young person, in the era of Facebook and Twitter. Third, counseling can actually work for those who get the counseling. Most suicidal people can be helped by one strategy or another: cognitive-behavioral therapy, antidepressant drugs... even just frank discussion can help. Remember, a large number of suicide attempts (in the USA, at any rate, and especially among women) aren't actually meant to succeed. Just because the phrase "a cry for help" is a hopeless cliche doesn't mean that most suicides are not, in fact, cries for help. And, of course, even if some genius psychometrician crunched numbers on all the above scenarios and concluded that the best response to a suicide would be a coverup and the silent treatment... nobody would believe it, and the school would get hammered, in public and in court, for trying such a policy. After all, the same aspects of culture that recognize many suicide attempts as desperate last-ditch cries for help also recognize that the appropriate response of your friends and family is to... offer help.
  - prakash 17y ago

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.