Role of university in preventing students’ suicide ideation (Part 2)

Following on my last post, Shek & Wong in their article proposed a string of actions that universities could do, including holding credit-bearing courses that emphasize social responsibility, mental health awareness and leadership skills for college students of all concentrations.  This is what my university has been doing except the second component and yet three students committed suicide within one year.  This has raised huge concerns at the university, even prompting marketing campaigns to parents of prospective students’ through meetings and newspaper publicity.  For the social responsibility aspects, we have tons of NGO and corporate projects to promote social responsibility, and I myself have proposed and am teaching a leadership skill course. 

Why the limited effectiveness of the measures?  In my opinion, it is to do with the mental health issues. Shek and Wong mentioned that in Hong Kong, poor mental health among local university students is an issue that deserves attention.  I can’t agree more.  The three students who had committed suicide, and those who have the suicide ideations, would never come to speak to us, the instructors.  The persons whom would have noticed are the peers.  Whilst we have peer mentors programs, we never provide adequate training to these peer mentors.  I have also just known that we have only one clinical psychologist or counseling on site for 13,000 students!  The university has been spending much effort on rolling out compulsory academic advisory services for all undergraduates.  But my point is it is highly unlikely for those who have suicidal thoughts to approach their advisors.  I really think there should be credit bearing courses on mental health issues.  There is one topic which I firmly believe is of tremendous value to university students, namely “how to handle failure”. 

 

Since we were kids, our parents taught us not to make mistakes, not to fail…..  Then teachers teach and inspire us on how to be successful.  No one really has taught me how to handle failure.  Coupled with the worsening of mental health in local adolescents and young adults, a course on how to handle failure would add tremendous value.  E.g. how do we handle situation when we fail in an examination, how do we handle the situation when we did not receive any interview opportunities having sent 100 application letters.  Universities should invest in improving students’ mental health.   

p.s. It seems I have found a new meaning in what I am doing with my doctorate in clinical psychology study.  After my completion, I want to be able to design a mass educational program on how to handle failure, which is in line with my interest in positive psychology.  This is what I should start looking into to prepare for my thesis.

Role of universities in preventing students’ suicide ideation (Part 1)

Recently I came across an article by Shek & Wong (2011) which discussed the need for holistic development in university students.  There are three things that caught my attention when I reflect on my experiences.  They are (1) Impact of depression on suicidal ideations, (2) the high similarities of characteristics between US and HK college students and (3) the need for university involvement.

Impact of depression on suicidal ideations

The authors reported that besides psychosocial stressors (e.g. examinations and financial stresses), mental health is a growing concern among university students.  Depression is the leading instigator to a variety of negative outcomes contributing to the bulk of suicides on college campuses.  A web-based survey of 2,843 Midwestern undergraduates found a prevalence rate of 15.6% for depressive or anxiety disorder.  Suicide is the second leading cause of death among college students in the US after homicides and accidents.  According to the Big Ten College Study, the death rate of suicide among college students is at an astonishing high rate of 7.5/100,000!  This data indeed supported the research I mentioned in my post dated 13 Dec about the mediation effect of depression to academic stress and suicidal ideations.  Whilst I do not have the Hong Kong statistics, the university which I am acquainted with does have a high suicidal rate, and I understand all of them had prior history of depression or anxiety.

 

The “dark side” of college students” (Shek & Wong, 2011)

I am truly amazed to find out what was described as the dark side for US students can be found in my HK students through the self-reflections logs they handed in as their assignments.  The Me Generations are not empathetic with rising narcissistic personalities especially in business students.  They are more self-interested than team-oriented.  In addition, many students are often not prepared to be young adults with all the responsibilities.  Moreover, there is a significant shift in college students’ values to a more self-focused and financially oriented philosophy, which is in line with a decrease in social responsibility and civic participation.  It was reported that the top two students’ goals were to be financially well-off (78.1) and raising a family (74.7%). 

 

What does this mean?  I believe the focus on extrinsic needs adds onto the stress and anxiety that an undergraduate face, especially so for Asian societies like HK which tends to evaluate a person’s success measured by career achievements and how much people earn.  This is worsened by the fact, as reported in the article that these students are not prepared to take on responsibilities.  I feel the level of anxiety or stress tolerance is lower than that of the Gen X (I know because I am one of them).  What causes this?  My educated guess is that these students used to enjoy parents’ warmth and protectiveness up to their high school years; but when they are at the university, they are derived from such parental type of warmth and protectiveness, coupled with their lack of willingness or capability to take on responsibilities as a young adult, they become stressed, feel high level of anxiety and even depressed.  A research mentioned in my previous post proposed that parenting warmth and protectiveness decreases level of depression.  Does it mean university educators need to take on the role of parenting to provide such warmth and protectiveness?  How should universities respond?  This is what I will discuss in my next post.

 

Reference

Shek, D.T.L and Wong, K.K. (2011).  Do adolescent developmental issues disappear overnight?  Reflections about holistic development in university students.  The ScientificWorld Journal, 11, 353-361. Doi:10.1100/tsw.2011.5

Academic stress, depression & suicidal ideation

Inspired by the article posted by fellow course-mate Edwin about academic stress and suicidal ideation, I decided to look into this area in my blog (thanks Edwin).  Specifically the article stated that adolescent depression is a mediator (as a third variable) for academic stress and suicide ideation.  This means the significance of the relationship between academic stress and suicidal ideation was significantly reduced in magnitude when depression was included in the research model.  This has huge implications on interventions because purely focusing on reducing academic stress may not be as effective as one would hope.  One should also look into addressing depression. 

 

I have mentioned in my previous posts the role of parents in preventing adolescents and young adults’ suicidal attempts (see post on 28 Oct).  To what extent parenting is responsible for causing major depression?  According to a research on perceived parenting and risk for major depression in Chinese women (Gao et al. 2012), it was found that high level of authoritarianism were associated with an increased risk for major depression while high levels of warmth were associated with a decreased risk for major depression.  This finding is the same as that in Western countries.  What is most interesting is that high level of protectiveness from both mothers and fathers were associated with a decreased risk for major depression, which is the opposite pattern of that observed in the Western samples.  One explanation the authors provided is that perhaps in mainland China, the father has a psychological role in a child therefore women in China have a different interpretation of the meaning of “protectiveness” when coming from the father.  Whilst more research is needed to confirm the effects of “protectiveness”, adolescents and young adults can make good use of a bit more warmth, caring and respect from their parents.  The next question is what stops the parents from doing so despite it is quite an obvious behavior?

Perhaps the answer is that the parents themselves are not happy!  According to today’s report in the South China Morning Post, “middle-class people earning less than HK$40,000 a month are the least satisfied with their lot, according to an annual “happiness” index.  But Hongkongers as a whole are less happy this year – with the index slipping from 71.3 to 70.5, the Lingnan University survey found.”  Well, it seems the simple answer to academic stress, depression and suicide ideation are rooted from staying happy. 

Reference

Gao, J., Li, Y., Cai., Chen, Y., Shen, S., Wei, Y., …Tao, M. (2012).  Perceived parenting and risk for major depression in Chinese women.  Psychological Medicine, 42, 921-930. Doi:10.1017/S0033291711001942