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

http://www.cds.caltech.edu/~andrea/blog/2009/07/suicide-cluster

by TriinT • 17 years ago

35 30 17 years ago

cds.caltech.edu

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• 17 years 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.

brandnewlow2• 17 years 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.

jacquesm4• 17 years 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.

prakash2• 17 years 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

arebop• 17 years 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).

cdibona• 17 years 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

There is another cluster of suicides from men in their mid 30s, from what I understand.

psyklic• 17 years 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• 17 years 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?

jacquesm4• 17 years ago

http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_to...

tdm911• 17 years 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.

jimboyoungblood2• 17 years ago

Did anyone else notice that all three were Asian males?

krakensden• 17 years ago

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

chriseppstein2• 17 years ago

It's Caltech. Not CalTech.

jimboyoungblood2• 17 years 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?artic...

dhbradshaw• 17 years 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.

chriseppstein2• 17 years 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.

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

Related Stories