The Habif Health and Wellness Center will promote conversations about suicide and mental health with a newly available training program, QPR.  QPR is a nationwide training course that emphasizes three key steps in “recognizing and responding to signs of suicidal thinking or behavior,” according to The Source, which are “question, persuade, and refer.” The program […]

I can pretty much guarantee you know someone you went to high school with, grew up with or met at Washington University who has committed suicide. My question then to you is: What keeps you silent? What keeps you from reaching out to your friends to check in? What are you scared of?

In the past, we didn’t like our rock stars hurt. We wanted gods, larger-than-life beings immune to everyday humdrum. We wanted Springsteen, embodying the rugged ideals of the blue-collar man, without the chronic back pain. We wanted David Bowie, beaming in from another planet, his identity as flexible as ours was static.

“I’m trying not to kill myself.” I was walking toward a staircase in the Danforth University Center Monday afternoon when a middle-aged black man missing his two front teeth and wearing a typical black Missouri Tigers sweatshirt asked me to talk to him.

Suicide is more common than alcohol-related death among college students, a recent study of national colleges found.

Recently, 22-year-old Ilya Zhitomirskiy died. He was a New York University dropout, and was one of four co-founders of the social network Diaspora*. His death sent minor reverberations around the Internet; it made the front pages of various tech blogs as well as Gawker and Yahoo.

Aug. 15, 2011, was a day that should change reality television forever. On that day, Russell Armstrong, the estranged husband of Taylor Armstrong of Bravo’s “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” committed suicide.

I’m glad to see the nation taking action on the issue of LGBT issues and bullying in general. I find it odd, however, that there has been little awareness of another similarity between these men, one that caused their deaths as surely as bullying did: they all had hidden battles with depression, a secret that eventually led to their suicides.

Tyler Clementi’s death was just one of several suicides by gay students in this past month alone. LGBT rights and acceptance has been, and continues to be, an extremely important issue on campuses. Here at Wash. U. we have a very active student body, and LGBT rights remains one of the most important issues for students on campus.

In the United States, suicide is the third leading cause of death among people from 15 to 24 years old. More than 3,900 young people die by committing suicide every year. Earlier this month, two students at Cornell University took their own lives by “gorging,” or leaping off a bridge into the vast gorges. The suicides have contributed to the perception that Cornell has a higher-than-average suicide rate.