Frequently Asked Questions
How many suicides occur off-campus?
Anecdotally, college mental health directors report that suicides on campus are pretty infrequent and that, in fact, quite a number occur "off campus," in residential apartments and fraternities. This makes sense because on-campus housing means that residential staff are on the premises, off-campus means no supervision by responsible university staff, and we would predict that having responsible university residential hall staff on the premises would decrease the number of completions.
Furthermore, if it is a university (vs. a college-only) setting, most graduate students live in private apartments and not in university housing on campus. Even when a university provides housing for grad students, it is often "off campus." Given that the suicide rate increases dramatically for Juniors and beyond (and especially grad students), one would think that most upperclassmen and grad students would be off-campus anyway. Very few schools offer situations where students are expected to live on-campus for all four years.
We have no data on commuter schools regarding the suicide rates for their populations. Obviously, students at commuter schools live with either their parents and/or roommates in apartments, but they always live off-campus.
In the Big 10 University study (21K pdf file) , many of the actively enrolled students who died lived in apartments and/or off-campus. We defined "enrollment" as within six months of last matriculation in order to pick up students who died over the summer, or students who were on medical leave for up to six months. Obviously, the majority of those suicides occurred "off campus," and the number was NOT inconsequential, indicating that many college students do die off-campus.
Mort Silverman, M.D.Senior Consultant, The Jed Foundation
