Chapter 19.College and University Students

College is often thought of as a time of new and expanded opportunities for young adult students, a move to independence and growth, so the suicide of a student is often seen as a tragic denial to make use of those opportunities. The suicide of a college student often garners considerable attention: in Vienna in 1910, Sigmund Freud chaired a symposium that led to one of the early efforts to examine suicide among university students (Slimak 1990). Although many of the principles pertinent to suicide risk assessment and treatment of adults and adolescents detailed elsewhere in this volume are relevant to the assessment and treatment of suicidal college students, the implementation of these principles by college mental health systems has some special features. The nature of college students’ stressors and living circumstances, students’ involvement with university staff and teachers, and the availability of college counseling services lead to approaches to college students that differ somewhat from those used with adults. Key differences are shown in Table 19–1. For simplicity, in this chapter the terms college, university, and school are used interchangeably.