All My Friends are Depressed:
What can people do as students’ depression cases spike?
Who should we blame in this case?
*content preview: discussion of suicide and mental health concerns
In the year 2009, the student, Han Nguyen, was a 25 years old Ph.D. candidate at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management. He leaped off from the top of one of the campus buildings moments after Professor Birger Wernerfelt, one of his teachers knowing that Nguyen had severe mental health issues, had harshly criticized him. Before this incident, Professor Werenerfelt mentioned that he had already taken steps to ease the stress on Nguyen since he did not want the institute to have “blood on its hands.” Nguyen’s parents had directly accused two of its professors and a dean of student life as “legally bound”（(Seelye M.I.T. is not responsible for student’s suicide, court rules) for Nguyen’s death. Ten years later, on May of 2018, the Supreme Judicial Court announced on its 44-page ruling that M.I.T could not be held responsible for Nguyen’s death since “there is no duty to prevent another from committing suicide.” Furthermore, the court suggested that universities “are not responsible for monitoring and controlling all aspects of their students’ lives,” and that there is “universal recognition” that the age of “in locos parentis,” in which universities could take responsibility for parents, is long gone.
Whom should we blame for the injustice? The Parents? The School? The student? Or perhaps society?
Before the accusation begins, let’s first consider the scale of this deep-rooted problem. According to the Center of Disease Control’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey conducted in 2019, 18.8% of high school students seriously considered attempting suicide and 8.9% actually attempted suicide (CDC Suicidal ideation and behaviors among high school students …); roughly 12% of college students report the occurrence of suicide ideation during their first four years in college(Wikipedia Suicide in colleges in the United States). Even though these ideation might not directly lead to suicide, in a high school of 750 students, about 150 students will experience a mental illness that interferes with their learning behavior(Rossen, Eric, and Katherine C. Cowan. Improving Mental Health in Schools). Numbers are mere numbers, but it should be reminded that behind every number is a Han Nguyen, a family, and a hole in the lives of each victim’s acquaintances.
Imagine that a student had just killed themself. If you are a classmate of the student, you may want to blame the teacher. You remembered all of the criticism and stress that your teacher had put on you. ‘No wonder he wanted to kill himself,’ you think to yourself. If you are the teacher of the student, you may want to blame the parents or the school. ‘Why would the parents allow their sick child to study in school, shouldn’t they have to take care of their own child? ‘Locos Parentis’ was long gone and why didn’t the school take care of the mental education? I only teach math and now parents are coming after me for constructively educating my students and accusing me that I had blood on my hand.’ If you are a parent, you may blame everyone around your kid. You are working day and night to pay for your child to not starve to death. You had a terrible childhood and none of this mental illness had ever occurred to you, or so you’d think since you barely even understand what this is about and the only truth that you understand is that the child that you had worked so hard to keep alive had just died on the school’s playground. You are in excruciating pain.
This cycle of blame is never-ending, even decades after the judge assigned responsibility and news articles(if it could ever see the light of day) fade away. The parent will never cease to experience the pain if they never even understood what went wrong. So is there nothing to do? Of course we cannot resurrect the dead, but we can prevent those in the future from being in the same position. Suicide is preventable. Many schools and institutions have reflected their recognition of mental health’s importance through their curriculum, but what this article is suggesting here is to introduce the parents into the discussion. As suggested by the CNN, 1 in 14 children has a caregiver with poor mental health(CDC Mental health of children and parents -a strong connection) and Children of parents with anxiety disorders are four to six times more likely to develop an anxiety disorder in their lifetime(Strauss How parents shape their children’s mental health). Even if they do not end their lives, students struggling emotionally or psychologically are unable to reach their potential(Rossen, Eric, and Katherine C. Cowan. Improving Mental Health in Schools). Maybe it is true that the age of “in locos parentis’ ‘ is gone, but if schools truly prioritize mental health, they should inform parents, not just the students since they have no economic support, of some basic facts regarding mental health such as possible symptoms of depression or self-harm by hosting seminars or even just handing out flyers. Parents cannot be isolated from this crucial information. Even if students understand everything, many symptoms are not easily observable via their own eyes. Even if they do see the problem, often they do not have the support that is required in order to seek help. Only if parents begin to understand the issue, can they truly join in the force of suicide prevention instead of despairing when everything had already happened.
Schools may not be held accountable for the death of their student, but they should do more, more than barring windows and installing huge wired nets across school buildings- more than telling students why they should just be happy and simply live out their life like everyone else does- more than announcing to parents that there is nothing they can do because they respect students’ “privacy, autonomy, and self-determination”(Seelye M.I.T. is not responsible for student’s suicide, court rules). We have to recognize that at the end of the day, home is the place where students spend most of their time. Toxic parenting will nip any student’s positive life attitude in the bud. As perhaps the only source for most parents in gaining insight in the field of education and mental health of students, schools should be responsible in providing basic mental health knowledge for parents.
Works Cited
- Rossen, Eric, and Katherine C. Cowan. “Improving Mental Health in Schools.” The Phi Delta Kappan, vol. 96, no. 4, 2014, pp. 8–13, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24376532. Accessed 14 Apr. 2022.
- “Mental Health of Children and Parents -a Strong Connection.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 23 Apr. 2021, https://www.cdc.gov/childrensmentalhealth/features/mental-health-children-and-parents.html.
- Seelye, Katharine Q. “M.I.T. Is Not Responsible for Student’s Suicide, Court Rules.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 7 May 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/07/us/mit-student-suicide-lawsuit.html.
- Strauss, Elissa. “How Parents Shape Their Children’s Mental Health.” CNN, Cable News Network, 4 Oct. 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/04/health/childrens-mental-health-wellness/index.html.
- Suicidal Ideation and Behaviors among High School Students … https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/su/pdfs/su6901a6-H.pdf.
- “Suicide in Colleges in the United States.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 8 Feb. 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_colleges_in_the_United_States.
