“I just have to turn off my thoughts—I have to. This is euthanasia, pure and simple. They shoot horses, don’t they?”
For Dr. Katherine A. Hermes, chair of Central Connecticut State University’s history department, statements like the one above have become a regular read.
The line is from a suicide note in the book “Explaining Suicide: Patterns, Motivations and What Notes Reveal” in which 1,280 letters were examined by Wright State University graduate students and professionals. Hermes conducted historical research on suicide and wrote chapters of the book with Cheryl L. Meyer, Taronish H. Irani ,and Betty Yung. She consequently dove into the world of other’s suffering since then.
Hermes, who has worked at CCSU for 20 years, has seen an alarming increase in recent years of students requiring assistance. Just in the fall, the load was very heavy.
“Last semester, I personally had two people that I had to walk over to the [Counseling and] Wellness Center,” she said. “I know at least two other professors took students over to Student Wellness [Services].”
In Dr. Hermes’ opinion, the level of diagnosed and undiagnosed anxiety disorders in students has skyrocketed; the number of individuals coming through the department with anxiety disorders and desired accommodations is up. The increase is significant.
“I had this one student in my office some years ago. I don’t think he killed himself, but he took a drug overdose or something. It was never reported to me exactly how he died. He had experienced a recent loss of someone very close to him and there was some contention in his family over this. He was very much in despair and came to me and we talked,” Dr. Hermes recalled, voice getting quieter and quieter. “I loved this kid. I thought he was a great kid. I knew that he was struggling and I did recommend that he get counseling, but I didn’t explicitly ask about suicidal thoughts.”
“I didn’t ask the question,” she went on. “I tried to reassure him that it would get better. I don’t know if it could’ve helped because I don’t know that he intentionally died, but he might’ve.”
Ask This Question
“The question” Dr. Hermes is referring to is one that can be preceded by a nervous gulp: “Are you thinking about killing yourself?”
Dr. Hermes learned the importance of this question—as well as the importance of its companion, “Are you thinking of hurting yourself?”—at a Question, Persuade, Refer training session. It was the first suicide prevention training Dr. Hermes had been provided by CCSU in her 20 years teaching at the university.
Led by Kate Ayotte, the one-day training lasts about two hours and teaches individuals when and how to intervene with those in whom they see signs of suicide. Participants are taught those two questions are essential and then, they are taught how to help by refering the person who is suffering to help.
“We have five of us that are trained to do this training,” said Ayotte, who is the Wellness Programs Administrator for Suicide Prevention at CCSU’s Office of Wellness Education. “We go to classrooms or clubs. Whatever group wants the training, we’ll do it. Our goal is to get 1,300 people trained in QPR on our campus. Right now, we’re at, I want to say, 527. We’re almost there, but we have a whole other year to do it. Hopefully, we’ll get there by the end.”
The training is open to students, faculty, and staff. It is not mandatory. In the history department, Dr. Hermes said that only five people went; the history department has 17 full-time faculty and 15 adjunct faculty.
In the case of Dr. James Arena, chair of chemistry and biochemistry, no one of the 19-member department, including him, has received any formal training on how to deal with a struggling student, to the best of his knowledge. This is despite the fact that he has personally “noticed both an increase in the number as well as in the severity when it comes to students struggling and needing help.”
“Anecdotally, I would say the number has tripled,” he wrote in an email interview. “In a course, say 29 years ago, that had only one or two students having difficulties, now four to six is the norm.”
Dr. Arena commented further that “because there are resources on campus to help students, I believe that I am adequately prepared to help students by pointing them in the right direction for expert help especially with respect to emotional [and] sensitive issues.” He added, however, that “certainly, it would be beneficial for faculty and staff to know all of the resources available on campus that can help struggling students in the various areas where assistance is required.”
“I think [training] should be mandatory and I do think it’s feasible,” Ayotte said. “We have five people who could do the training, so we could split it up into sections and groups and it could be a summer thing. However, I don’t know if faculty would be really willing to spend the time to do that.”
It is uncertain whether the voluntary QPR training will even remain on campus. The on-campus training was made possible through a federal grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The grant allows Wellness Education to purchase necessary QPR materials and to provide the training is free for participants.
The university is on the second year of the grant; after the grant runs out, the future of suicide prevention efforts is murky. Ayotte’s position at Wellness Education, created through the grant’s funding, will most likely no longer exist, especially because of budget cuts in the state making receiving the grant again unforeseeable.
“There’s a lot going on now and I wish it would stay,” Ayotte stated. “We don’t know what this office will look like. I think that our intern and our coordinator, Dr. Jonathan Pohl, will take on some of the suicide prevention program, but I don’t think it’ll be able to look like what it does now without a full-time person doing it.”
“If we had more staff in our office, we’d be able to do much more prevention-wise and wellness-wise. There are eight factors of wellness and that’s a lot for just one person to cover, especially on a college campus our size. To only have one permanent full-time person in Wellness Education, it really, I think, is a disservice to our students,” she went on. “With the grant, it makes it more possible, but once the grant is over, it’ll be harder to sustain, so we’re just trying to do the best with what we have.”
Providing Help Beyond Campus
No matter what happens with the grant and funding for suicide prevention programs, Ramon Hernandez, will continue assisting students. He has done so before the grant and during it—he has done it as a career counselor, an academic advisor, a high school teacher and, now, as Student Affairs’ associate dean.
The day he was interviewed for this article, Hernandez had gotten onto a public bus with a student to show them how to get to Wheeler Clinic. The student’s GPA in the fall, he said, was zero, and their mental state—which they were trying to maintain without medication or counseling—was even worse, needing a level of help that the university couldn’t give.
The same day, another student was institutionalized. At the time of the interview, Hernandez wasn’t sure if the student was going to return.
Photo by Ryan Callinan
The 250 to 300 students Hernandez and his assistants are helping between 250 and 300 students at any one time. Many of them have not gone to classes in weeks. For some of them, it is inconceivable to even roll out of bed in the morning beause they are suffering so much. As their grades plumet and problems mount, Hernandez seeks to provide them with counseling and accomodations, while saving whatever academic credits he can.
“If I can save three [or] four courses and withdraw from one, we try really hard to do that. I even try one because I need you to feel successful and then we work from there,” Hernandez described.
In the fall, Hernandez saw 25 to 30 students withdraw from CCSU due to struggles with mental health. According to him, that amount is typical for every semester, especially since students with a doctor’s note can withdraw at any time. The exact number that withdraw because of their suffering outside of his office is one that is impossible to discern precisely; some do not explicitly state their reasoning for leaving.
“It’s our reality. More and more students are coming to college with mental health problems. Somewhere along the line, somebody did not inform them or pretended that they’re going to be okay, but college is an anxiety-inducing environment. Mental health has just taken over us,” Hernandez stated.
“The counseling staff we have is not enough for our 11,000 students, both undergraduate and graduate,” he added. “We’re doing a search for another full-time counselor. That’s how serious this issue is. The need has increased.”
In spite of the escalation of the necessity of services—which he, Ayotte and Hermes all attribute to not only more clinical anxiety and depression amongst students, but also to decreased stigma and students’ openness—Hernandez is grateful for the number of individuals coming to him rather than resorting to suicidal impulses.
“I would say two years ago was probably rougher because we had people who took their lives,” Hernandez expanded. “A lot of times they’re off campus, but some of us know. Last semester, don’t get me wrong, there’s a high level of students with anxiety, but I don’t think anybody took their life. That’s how I’m judging it. But the last two years, we’ve seen more of mental health in the classroom where professors are calling us and we’re having to go into the classroom to remove students and that’s kind of new. I just went to the School of Business and had to remove somebody and get them some services.”
Hernandez also stated that no mandatory training was an issue. Though he’d had training provided and funded to him by the university, he sees “the need to get staff trained” as well. Furthermore, he believes that having more conversations on behavioral health would allow Student Affairs, Wellness Education and Student Wellness to do more.
“I get emails that say, ‘Oh, two weeks ago, I tried to kill myself,’ and that freaks our faculty out. Students are being a lot more open about their mental issues,” Hernandez said. “It’s a tough subject, but we’ve gotta have it. It’s like the #MeToo sexual assault. That’s one of those discussions we have to have and mental health is a discussion we have to have.”
If you are suicidal, or know someone who is, call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255 or visit https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ and hit the “chat” button for immediate help.