Why Do Popular, Attractive, and Talented People Commit Suicide?
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Suicide is tragic enough, but it’s particularly bewildering when young people who appear to have it all take their own lives. But recent research into the national increase in suicide among those aged 15 to 24 finds a unique intersection that exacerbates the burden on those prone to mental illness—enormous pressure to be perfect, combined with seemingly having it all going for you, combined with feeling exactly the opposite inside. And social media isn’t helping.
In a fascinating piece at the New York Times looking at the influx in campus suicides, we learn that some 1,100 undergraduates commit suicide a year, according to prevention and outreach group Active Minds, and that the national suicide rate for the aforementioned 15-24 year-old group is on a “modest” but “steady” increase since 2007 according to the CDC. Also, that college counseling centers report from surveys that the number of their clients with severe psychological problems—more than half—is up 13 percent over two years. And, that at the University of Pennsylvania, where in January 2014, the popular, attractive, and talented freshman Madison Holleran killed herself, she was, tragically, one of six who would also take their lives that same year.
Julie Scelfo writes:
Ms. Holleran was the third of six Penn students to commit suicide in a 13-month stretch, and the school is far from the only one to experience a so-called suicide cluster. This school year, Tulane lost four students and Appalachian State at least three — the disappearance in September of a freshman, Anna M. Smith, led to an 11-day search before she was found in the North Carolina woods, hanging from a tree. Cornell faced six suicides in the 2009-10 academic year. In 2003-4, five New York University students leapt to their deaths.
Scelfo details the University of Pennsylvania’s efforts to investigate contributing factors, and their increase in resources and prevention programs—anything to make it easier for a troubled student to get help, whether it’s extending the counseling center’s hours, doing more outreach. But perhaps most importantly, being willing to scrutinize a well-known campus syndrome called “Penn Face”—essentially acting like everything is great when really you’re drowning. And it’s not just a Penn thing. Scelfo writes:
While the appellation is unique to Penn, the behavior is not. In 2003, Duke jolted academe with a report describing how its female students felt pressure to be “effortlessly perfect”: smart, accomplished, fit, beautiful and popular, all without visible effort. At Stanford, it’s called the Duck Syndrome. A duck appears to glide calmly across the water, while beneath the surface it frantically, relentlessly paddles.
“Nobody wants to be the one who is struggling while everyone else is doing great,” said KahaariKenyatta, a Penn senior who once worked as an orientation counselor. “Despite whatever’s going on — if you’re stressed, a bit depressed, if you’re overwhelmed — you want to put up this positive front.”
Scelfo helps us understand these pressures and the often crippling anxiety they can create through the purview of Penn student Kathryn DeWitt, a 20-year-old student who openly discusses her frustrating struggle with depression and anxiety.
DeWitt, in short, crushed high school. Track, leadership roles, AP classes. Highly engaged parents who encouraged often but noticed every potentially slipping grade. She kept the hustle torch burning in college, where she tutored kids, joined a Christian organization, and soon experienced the deflating knowledge that there were other students who were more talented, smarter, more accomplished already.
“One friend was a world-class figure skater,” she told Scelfo. “Another was a winner of the Intel science competition. Everyone around me was so spectacular and so amazing and I wanted to be just as amazing as they are.”
While most of us can remember the precise moment in which we became acquainted with our particular limitations, we muddle through, accepting this as part of the experience of being alive—there will always be someone prettier, more successful, more talented, more accomplished. It’s up to us to carve out some kind of unique identity in the world that means something to us in spite of this truth, which cannot be altered.
But for college students prone to anxiety, depression, or other mental illness, this realization can be the beginning of a downward spiral from which recovery often seems out of reach. “What you and I would call disappointments in life, to them feel like big failures,” Penn counselor Meeta Kumar told Scelfo.