

Caltech's going through a bad period: 3 suicides in 3 months - TriinT
http://www.cds.caltech.edu/~andrea/blog/2009/07/suicide-cluster

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ryanwaggoner
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.

~~~
brandnewlow
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.

~~~
prakash
_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>

~~~
mechanical_fish
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
I am not saying you should cover it up; just don't publicize it. I agree with
you on the counseling bit -- take action, but again, be discreet about it.

Regd, students hearing about it, I am not so sure. One was in CS, the other in
Chem, not sure about the 3rd. Precisely because we are in the era of FB & T,
many might not have heard about it when compared to a university wide email.

------
chriseppstein
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.

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tdm911
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.

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jimboyoungblood
Did anyone else notice that all three were Asian males?

~~~
krakensden
It's CalTech, not Tuskegee- Asian males are a large chunk of the population.

~~~
jimboyoungblood
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?artic...](http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=c2b8f3a43bbe3e0445f23274028d24a7)

------
movix
"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?

~~~
jacquesm
[http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-
bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_to...](http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-
bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=103;t=000628;p=0)

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dhbradshaw
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.

