Why I Tried To Kill Myself at Penn | Hacker News Reader

Why I Tried To Kill Myself at Penn

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54 pointsoptul73 comments

Penn’s response? – Sending some administrator to see me in the hospital (HUP). The first and only thing that she said was, “Are we going to make this an annual pattern?” because I had been hospitalized the year before. I said “No” and she gave me her business card.

My kids are going to college in a couple of years. How do I avoid sending them to places like this?

People expect (and should expect) to be treated better than this by their employers. But by their vendors?

I went to and live near NYU and not much time passes between each attempted undergrad suicide. I experienced the same thing among soldiers (particularly those in basic training and AIT) who would harm themselves.

The general dismissive attitude of higher-ups and admins is that pill overdosing is attention-seeking behavior and that things like kids jumping off high locations is communicable behavior. So that's what suicide prevention folks are up against in terms of enlisting help from those on campus.

I would guess if this is a significant concern to you then you'll want to make sure the college has an active, directed, intentional position for a suicide prevention specialist or group whose sole responsibility is identifying, preventing, and treating potential suicide cases.

Because unfortunately admins and even RAs aren't always going to be the most attentive about this issue on their own.

Send them to a small teaching-focused college. Institutions that are large, focused on graduate students, and/or focused on research have an incentive structure that puts a lower priority on the care of individual students.

I went to a <1000-student college, and when I had some trouble at home I had an hour-long session with the school counselor, who referred me to a nearby professional. I was also on a first-name basis with some of the deans, and they were able to help accommodate me.

tl;dr Go somewhere that you're a person and not a statistic.

It's really interesting to notice the trade-offs. I went to a small-ish, teaching-focused college (The University of Puget Sound: http://www.pugetsound.edu/). And just as you say, I found that the faculty and staff was really supportive and concerned with our well-being.

And while the faculty was very strong, I sometimes felt jealous of friends from the University of Washington (the nearby Huge Research Institution) and what seemed like a more extensive CS program with more resources. I heard about some of the classes my friends took that our program didn't really have any equivalent for. I would read about some of the problem sets that sounded amazing, like a security class where you're given a VM image and the problem set is to compromise some of the programs inside the VM. Advanced curriculum like that seems difficult to develop without a lot of grad students around. A part of me has always pined for that experience I didn't get to have.

I guess it's hard to have it all.

As someone who has done a pretty serviceable job of building those kinds of courses for systems security: I wouldn't be jealous of that at all; the fundamentals of CS are what matters.

If that's something that's still interesting to you, check out http://microcorruption.com.

> If that's something that's still interesting to you, check out http://microcorruption.com.

I was very excited to see that for just that reason. :) I think I peaked at #24 on the day it was announced, but I'm sure I've slipped quite a bit since then.

Fundamentals are important; agreed, but the difference between knowing the theory of buffer overflows and having actually exploited one is a huge to me. Now I can say that I have actually done that, thanks to you having packaged everything up so nicely on microcorruption.com, but even that isn't 100% of the experience I would like to have, because the environment is a lot different than what I program on day-to-day.

For example, I know that I shouldn't map any memory wx (and I explained this rule in my article about JITs: http://blog.reverberate.org/2012/12/hello-jit-world-joy-of-s...), but I don't really know why. I don't actually know what an attack would look like where having wx memory around makes an exploit easier.

If you can control what gets written to the wx memory, then all you have to do as an attacker is rewrite a function pointer or return address to that memory. Better yet, if you can rewrite a return address, you can "return" to a read call (or some fancier ROP chain) that will read the rest of your shellcode into the wx memory and execute it.

In either case, having that kind of memory around can only make things easier for an attacker, while by itself not being exactly a vulnerability.

You have to really be there for yours kids, as a parent, and make efforts to understand them and support them. That's about all you can do. And that's probably enough.

College students everywhere are cruel and callous (which seemed to be one of the big factors in the story). And my school did not have the kind of therapist support described in the article---seems like Penn is probably ahead of 99% of large US schools in that regard.

If you're kids are at risk then perhaps college should be postponed..you're kinda out of luck because at some point they will have to make their own choices.

I have no affiliation with Penn. However, I would be cautious before accepting the literal words of the story at face value.

I accept without reservation that this is how this person perceives the interaction with the administrator. But before accepting that this is how Penn's administrators believe they interacted with the person, or how a third party would perceive the interaction, I'd like more information. Being ill enough to be in the hospital -- even for non-psychiatric disease -- can cloud the sensorium. And this is a grave allegation.

I'm happy to hear other people agree that it's a grave accusation.

I think this very much depends on what your kids are like. Are they very outgoing and good in new situations? Then it most likely won't matter where you send them - they will find a place they fit in and have a great group of friends they can be supported by. However if they may not be as naturally personable, then looking into what the school itself offers and how your child will be able to take advantage of that is crucial.

And the other huge factor to me is what your kids want to study. A big factor in this person getting into this situation in the first place was the crushing sense of loneliness she felt at Penn due to the fact that she couldn't have real social interactions with her friends. There was always some secondary motive (studying most often) that didn't allow her to just relax and be comfortable. I went to a large state school where people certainly valued doing well at school, but where socializing and being there for each other was paramount. There just wasn't such an ingrained culture of '4.0 GPA or death' that seems to come up in these more competitive schools. I had a bunch of friends with minor to severe mental health issues and there was never any doubt about what came first - grades or friends, and this seemed to be the way I saw most people interact.

However I was also lucky to be in a field where my side-projects and initiative counted for more than anything else. If I had been trying to become a doctor, or a lawyer, or some trader on Wall Street, my choice in schools could have been a serious detriment to my career. But to me becoming a well adjusted person and learning to deal with all the world can throw at you were perhaps the most important things I got out of college. Just my 2 cents.

I suggest that you think a bit more deeply about this. It's possible that the administrator was being thoughtless, but there's another interpretation -- it's a bad idea to give suicide attempters too much attention. By responding with too much sympathy, one can become a "suicide enabler", the suicide equivalent of a narcissistic enabler.

If a person threatens suicide and gets nothing but attention and sympathy, this can trigger a cyclical, escalating pattern of threats and sympathetic responses that can sometimes trap the person into going through with the suicide.

Here's a true story -- many years ago one of my brothers committed suicide. After a few weeks, another brother told me he was compiling a list of people he felt were responsible for the suicide. My first comment was, "Is [the suicide] included on the list?" Of course, he wasn't. My next comment was that the list was dangerous -- the suicide's son would see how attentive and sympathetic everyone was being and he might begin to think suicide was a good idea. My brother didn't really understand what I was saying, the list got created and passed around, and a few years later, the suicide's son committed suicide also.

True story.

I find this sentiment alarming. I'd ask you to reread the article, particularly the first quarter of it, and stipulate that the account is accurate. What do you think of this particular response to an actual suicide attempt?

I'm sorry about your brother. I've lost close friends to suicide. For what it's worth: I don't blame them, anymore than I would blame someone who died of leukemia for their illness. But a suicide has many victims, and I can't blame you for being angry either.

> I find this sentiment alarming.

It's not a "sentiment", it's a case history. My brother created a list of guilty parties, people responsible for a suicide, but didn't include the suicide on the list. My nephew drew the obvious conclusion -- if he killed himself, this would place him outside any notion of responsibility, and he would get massive sympathy as well.

It was unbelievably irresponsible to portray suicide that way, and it had a predictable effect. But the responsibility for suicide rests solely with those who kill themselves.

> I've lost close friends to suicide. For what it's worth: I don't blame them ...

I do. To me, if suicides understand that they'll be held responsible, that they will be judged to have ungratefully thrown away the gift of life, they shouldn't expect sympathy, that might have a beneficial effect on the suicide rate.

How important do you think the list was as a factor? Is it the main factor? Or do you mention it to support a point?

I only brought it up to warn my brother of the dangers in making suicide look attractive, as a way to get sympathy. Once my prediction came to pass, obviously I dropped the topic. In any case, as far as I am concerned, the person committing suicide is entirely and solely responsible.

I'm not here to judge anything your family did in response to a suicide. I'm sorry you had to deal with it at all. I don't have an opinion beyond that.

But I can be clinical about a case I read in a blog post by a stranger, and I remain interested in your response to that case.

I'm very sorry you lost people to suicide. Compiling the list may just have been a coping mechanism for your brother, and I don't think it's fair to think it had anything to do with the son's suicide.

> Compiling the list may just have been a coping mechanism for your brother, and I don't think it's fair to think it had anything to do with the son's suicide.

I didn't say it that way, either here or at the time. I only warned my brother that the list might provoke my nephew to kill himself, not that this would make my brother responsible. The actual suicide was, of course, solely the responsibility of the nephew.

Did your brother tell you that he was sorry for ignoring your advise, after your nephew killed himself?

When someone expresses suicidal ideation you get that person support because suicidal thinking is a risk factor for attempted and completed suicide.

Treating a suicidal person harshly because you don't want to encourage suicidal behaviour is a sub optimal strategy if your aim is to reduce the numbers or people attempting suicide and dying from suicide.

Suicide is a significant cause of death so it's probably a good thing to better understand suicidal thinking and behaviour.

> Treating a suicidal person harshly ...

Wait, what? That's not what I said. I'm saying it's a mistake to give too much attention and sympathy to suicidal ideations.

I would equate that to being harsh.

It's a simple question of what works. Giving too much sympathy and attention to someone who discusses suicide is a bad idea. It is to suicide what an enabler is to a narcissist.

It's more constructive to think of a way to get the person to imagine something other than suicide, but in a way that doesn't encourage a repeat performance.

Unless you're the best of the best, or you really care, an ivy-league school isn't going to be great for your quality of life. I know tons of kids that have cracked under the pressures of penn/cornell/etc. Send your kids to smaller, less prestigious school.

I went to Butler University and I struggled much like the Penn student above. Two hospitalizations while there, I believe. Everyone involved there--all the professors I knew, and all the administrators who took on my case--were just exceptionally supportive and kind. They really cared, and they were damned good at what they did. In the end I wouldn't have gotten onto the path of getting better without them--especially my advisor, who intervened in a very personal way that probably took some guts.

Another person suggested small teaching colleges. Seeing as Butler is a 4000-ish person college, maybe there's something to this. But I'd like to think that even in big colleges, the student-health-oriented administrative staff would be on their game. I dunno.

It's ridiculous that the author doesn't even consider that her taking prescribed Wellbutrin (and possibly other medicines) could have led to this. I'm quite sure such "anti-depressants" (what a misnomer) had a lot more to do with the suicide than anything Penn or any other institution or individual could possibly have. Of course, this is an extremely unpopular opinion, though based on medical cases and evidence, in our culture which sees drugs as the solution to all mental problems.

I took Wellbutrin back when it was popular to prescribe as an aid to get off nicotine. OMG, what horrible stuff (for me, anyway). I wasn't ready to stick a shotgun in my mouth or anything, but it gave me a severe case of what a friend called "the fuckits". Didn't care about anything (including the consumption of nicotine). I would have been content to sit and do nothing. One day when I had some from free time and the house to myself, I decided to go for a motorcycle ride down some twisty road. Got a few miles down the road and decided I didn't care about going for a motorcycle ride. Considering that one of the reasons I moved next to the Appalachian Mountains was for the fantastic motorcycle riding, that was a strong enough signal that I quit taking the stuff.

Now that's anecdotal, and your mileage most certainly may vary, but I now understand how a mis-diagnosis and an inappropriate prescription can cause problems.

It's interesting that very safe chemicals like tianeptine and phenibut are not approved and used clinically in America, as they are in other countries. Instead much more profitable chemicals with known dangers are used.

I don't know anything about Wellbutrin in particular, so it's entirely possible that its effects are very different from what I'm aware of and that it won't fit this pattern, but in my experience it is always important that people who are just starting anti-depressants or are switching anti-depressants have extra support and people looking out for them during the transition period; this isn't because anti-depressants don't work, it's because they take time to gain full effectiveness. A typical pattern is that patients will start to feel empowered and motivated to do something about their situation before they start to feel happy- as a result, "doing something about their situation" frequently means "trying to end it through suicide". The medication is working just fine, it's just not up to full effectiveness, and needs to be given time to get the patient through the transition period to where they stop wanting to kill themselves.

(Source: several friends with clinical depression who have gone through this, plus a wife who recently completed a semester working as a psychiatric student nurse.)

> I'm quite sure such "anti-depressants" (what a misnomer) had a lot more to do with the suicide than anything Penn or any other institution or individual could possibly have.

Are you basing this claim on the following study?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bupropion#cite_note-FDA-43

I'm not taking a stand on whether that study's conclusions are correct or incorrect. I'm just seeking to clarify how you reached your conclusion.

Regarding that study, Wikipedia states that "Considered in isolation, [Wellbutrin] was not statistically different from placebo." Again, I won't judge the accuracy of Wikipedia's statement. I just wanted to point it out.

I'm basing it on the black box warning, personal experience, and the review of various patient cases both in person and (less so) anecdotal evidence online.

FDA Warning (partial) (http://www.nami.org/Template.cfm?Section=About_Medications&t...):

"In short-term studies, antidepressants increased the risk of suicidality in children, adolescents, and young adults when compared to placebo. Short-term studies did not show an increase in the risk of suicidality with antidepressants compared to placebo in adults beyond age 24. Adults age 65 and older taking antidepressants have a decreased risk of suicidality."

Antidepressants don't make people have suicidal thoughts. They give people just enough energy and ability to execute on plans, which sometimes include suicide.

Agreed. I've been on AD's for over ten years and everyone has to find what works for them. It's not magic. You have to do your homework (if you are in a position to. Some folks aren't). What works for me is Lexapro. I switched to Zoloft 6 months ago because I believe you have to try other options and it was a very ugly, dark time. Just switched back to the Lexapro and I feel great. What works for one doesn't work for the other.

"The night of my suicide attempt I called a friend and told him that I was contemplating suicide. He told me he was sorry and to call a suicide hotline. We have not talked about my suicide attempt since that night. "

The word 'friend' is used over ten times referring to some human acquaintance or other but it really seems like this person doesn't have a single real friend.

Good catch. I feel like the author failed to mention this- There might've been a much different conclusion if she had found her niche.

I don't remember a single class or even a single conversation with a parent, pastor, other kind of leader figure, from my youth about "how to deal with friends or people who have problems." Sometimes you're lucky and get the, "How to find help if you feel like you're in trouble" resources but how in the hell does someone know how to handle this situation? I don't feel qualified to help anyone other than my immediate closest friends and family regarding the topic of suicide, and even then I feel overwhelmed just thinking about it. There are professionals out there who know what to say, when the saying is important to be done, as I know for sure that listening is a big component of help. I just have no words other than to share my own struggles, and oftentimes people don't want to hear about anything other than their own pit.

I believe suicidal tendencies is simply when the weight of feelings from depression, anxiety, and psychosis outweigh results from coping mechanisms. I don't think it has as much to do with feelings of sadness or lack of happiness.

Is happiness not a coping mechanism for anxiety?

I think happiness is a result of a coping mechanism. Aerobic exercise can be a coping mechanism, which increases happiness.

> Is happiness not a coping mechanism for anxiety?

That describes happiness as a method, rather than an effect or an outcome. But it's an effect, generally out of people's control except as a desirable outcome of things that really are methods, like jogging or crossword puzzles.

Happiness isn't a switch that you can throw, it's the light that results from throwing the switch.

I too have opinions about what causes suicide, but considering I'm not an expert in the field, I keep them to myself because they don't add to the conversation.

> it is that the environment here is so stressful that everyone is driven to the point where they need to be at CAPS.

I feel sorry for those who suffer from depression, I have been there myself in a rough patch of my life. It seems like the author is indirectly blaming Penn, that it causes all students to "NEED" a therapist. This simply isn't true.

That's sad to hear of a suicide attempt and I hope the author finds peace and stability.

With that said, I am firmly of the opinion that it is not the responsibility of an educational institution to change to accommodate people who find an environment too stressful. If one finds it too difficult or stressful and the institution is providing adequate mental health services (which the author acknowledged), you are simply in an environment you should not be in. Go to a college that is more relaxing. You have hundreds of other options that will be much less stressful. Changing Penn to a less stressful environment would not make it Penn anymore. Lots of people thrive at and enjoy Penn.

I do not mean to sound harsh - it's simply a reality. It just concerns me that the author acknowledges the school makes him/her suicidal yet is unwilling to leave and lays the blame on the school for his/her suicidal attempts.

As someone who just graduated from Penn last May, I feel inclined to comment.

Penn can be a stressful environment, no doubt. Most of the students who attend Penn were at the top of their class in high school. Many dominated in athletics as well. For these reasons, some students are shocked by the level of excellence, and the rigor of some classes.

That said, I would be cautious to generalize this story. I know people who have received help from CAPS, and they are healthy-minded friendly students today. As with any school, the most important thing you can do is join communities or clubs where there is a collective enthusiasm for something outside of class.

As a graduate, I can confidently say I loved Penn, and my peers would say the same. I'm also glad these stories of students are being shared because there is always room for improvement.

Sounds like she had a lot of awful friends who outright refused to be there for her.

> Sounds like she had a lot of awful friends who outright refused to be there for her.

Don't be too hard on them -- it's likely they were also struggling and making difficult choices too.

What if they were also dealing with emotional issues? Unfortunately we only have so much emotional energy and sometimes it is depleted when our friends need us the most.

When I have a broken leg I go to doctors to have it fixed. My friends[1] play an important role in helping me get groceries or chatting to me about the awful itchyness. But qualified professionals do the xrays and put the cast on.

When I have a severe mental health problem why do people think that a few chats with people who have little experience of mentla health treatment is going to help?

Sure, for the mild end society really needs to be better at talking about this stuff. And it's great if people are supportive when talking about the severe end too. But chatting to a pal is 't going to fix my suicidal thinking.

I found the blog post confusing. It refers to an event from a few years ago and MH practice moves rapidly. It mentioned how tricky the author found it to talk about MH problems but then asks other people to be better at talking about MH problems. She mentions a history of depression and anxiety but she didn't appear to have good rainy day action plans or coping techniques.

I'm not sure what the takeawY is: "don't be a high stress environment" seems reasonable but you're fighting a losing battle with that one.

[1] lol as if I have friends.

While the OP was focused on Penn (I'm a Penn grad '04, fwiw), I'm sure this is pretty common at a lot of other selective colleges. I wrestled with a lot of the same exact feelings the OP did, although it never quite got so bad for me.

Ultimately I just remember struggling so much with... "identity," if that's the right word for it. Penn basically ended up disproving everything I thought I knew about myself when I was 18. I thought I was a "high achieving" individual, then I was suddenly very average. I thought I was someone that made friends easily, then I found myself on a campus with 11,000 undergrads yet basically felt like I had no friends. I thought my ethnicity was irrelevant because I we now lived in a post-racial America (hah!), but it seemed like so many organizations there defined themselves by socioeconomic or racial lines. I thought I was good at programming, yet I felt so completely lost in my comp sci classes.

It was pretty harrowing feeling like everything I thought I knew about myself was false, and I couldn't figure out what was true, and I was still expected to achieve at a very high level while I was figuring it out. The OP's anecdote about going to Wawa really hit home, because I remember almost literally the same thing happening to me, and that's all it would take to feel like nothing made sense anymore. Am I really the kind of person who doesn't have a single fucking friend out of 11,000 undergrads that would take a 10 minute break to grab a sandwich?

The OP seemed to blame Penn as an institution, and I do think these selective universities could do more to recognize that some of their students will basically feel like they've been abruptly thrown into a crucible, and it's not always painless to adjust. The OP advocates things like publishing suicide rates, but I think that's just another way of advocating, "please tell everyone they don't need to pretend everything is great, because I've felt fucking miserable sometimes and I don't think I'm the only one."

There was a guy in my freshman dorm that basically did "crack" and abruptly withdrew for the semester, and I just remember everyone just kind of smirking about it. "Yeah, Sean went nuts or something. Was spazzing out over a midterm and then next thing I know, all his stuff's packed and he's gone. Guess he couldn't hack it."

I didn't smirk. I just remember feeling sad and wishing Sean had said something to me. Feeling overwhelmed apparently meant "going nuts." Was that fair? That didn't seem fair. I don't think Sean would have thought it was fair either. Maybe we could have gotten a sandwich at Wawa and talked about that.

I think a big part of this is "don't go to Penn". It has a bad reputation in Philadelphia in general. I'm not going to get too into detail about what that reputation is[1], but suffice to say, I think OP probably would have a much better time at a different school completely. Even Drexel, which is literally next door to Penn, is nicer in terms of how students are treated and treat each other.

Going to Penn is basically accepting all of the expense and pressure of attending Harvard or Yale, without the prestige. And in my mind, the only reason to put up with the expense of those schools is the prestige. It's not like you can't get a great education at far cheaper schools.

[1] other than to say that the story of the relationship with an emotionally abusive pre-med boyfriend isn't terribly surprising.

From my unscientific "splatterwall of experiences", this is pretty much the norm, though I know of exceptions, such as smaller, gender-specific colleges that will bend over backwards to help (e.g. girls or boys-only colleges).

I knew multiple people at MIT who used the mental health services/therapists there. My impression was that their experience was positive, and that at least someone was there to listen and have a conversation with them.

While in college I also felt out of place and friendless for some time. My suggestion to college students now would be to join clubs around your interests. Soccer, ultimate frisbee, archery, chess, trading cards, what ever. Just make a little effort, and I am sure you will find friends. Join clubs you personally like, rather then clubs that make you look cool or something like that. This way you'll actually hang out with people who like the same things you do, and may give you more of a chance.

To colleges, create a system that makes it easy to organize such clubs and maintain them. Like a college centric meetup. Set it up and promote the hell out of it to the first years. Perhaps there is a startup opportunity here, to make the system and sell it to colleges! Facebook works well for this, but it would be easier to do this if there was a central repository of different group that college students have started, and a simple way to request university resources, like rooms, etc.

On suicide, this may sound cold, but if you want to kill your self, do it. Honestly, I feel it's every persons right to dispose off with their life as they will. But DO NOT threaten suicide as a way to get attention! Doing so is no different then you taking someone as a hostage and threatening to kill that person just to get attention. You are basically saying to the world "Pay attention to me, and if you do not, someone is going to die, and it's YOUR fault." If you feel really sad, call your friends and be honest, tell them that you feel really sad and you NEED someone to talk to desperately. If they are your true friends, they will make time for you. I would, for any of the people I call friends, no matter the time of night or what ever. And if they ignore you, telling them you are going to kill your self isn't going to change anything, they are not your friends, and they don't give a shit. Call your parents or family, if that's an option. Parents may seem like distant and not understanding at that age, but in most cases they will stick by you even if you have no one else.

Finally, just food for thought, my dad once told me this about evolution: In nature the "winners" are those creatures that pass their genes on to the next generation, and the "losers" are those creatures who's genetic lineage is cut off. Just based on the fact that you are alive today you can be assured that you come for a very, very, very long line of winners. So, when you feel down on your self, just remember, there are millions of generations of creatures which came before you. They figured out how to succeed in life, thus making you possible, and so will you, just give it time. Just about the only way to lose in life it to stop playing. So check out if you like, but if you stick around, the odds are on your side.

Note that in any sane universe you'd feel able to talk to your parents about this. But we're in backwards-land, where parents exist to be impressed.

Suicide doesn't usually happen when people are depressed. It happens when they're going into or out of a depression. Think of depression as night; suicide usually happens at evening or morning twilight. More often, the morning twilight. They're getting out of depression, can see the big picture again (when you're depressed, you can't) and realize what a mess their lives are in. They freak out, for lack of a better word. They're not in the throes of depression, but still emotionally unstable. That is when suicide tends to happen.

Society makes it worse by kicking such people when they're down and making it a lot harder for people to pull themselves out of depression and get the recovery they need.

For example, when I missed a midterm exam because I was in the hospital after my suicide attempt, my professor did not allow me to make it up.

See, it's shit like that. One period of illness and now you're playing for a D+. One slip and your life just might be fucked.

Ok, and here's why this will never improve in American society. We run this contest of superficial reliability at relatively easy (intellectually speaking) work, and our corporate overlords are selected based on who drops last. Usually, the culling agent is a short-term episode of anxiety or depression (or "burn out") in a normal person. They're considered "the weak" and pushed aside. That is why our society cannot, on the terms it lives by now, ever accommodate these genuine (and serious) medical problems.

As it's structured now, society is more about competing for position than excellence, and the result of that is that people have to be kicked when they're down.

I would argue for scrapping the whole thing (society, that is), rethinking all assumptions, and gearing our society toward genuine excellence (and toward helping the sick, unconditionally) rather than mindless, senseless competition... but that's just me.

A member of our year took their life at college. None of us knew whatever was going on in their life or mind. And that is the hardest part - societal stigma prevented the person reaching out to peers and friends, and probably stopped us collectively being proactive in stepping in, in case we mistakenly labelled someone as appearing in need of help.

It transpired they had tried to reach help online, the place where most youth head these days, but instead of help they received encouragement to kill themaelves.

Cracking the very tough nut of getting people actually talking would save more lives and disrupt more attempts.

attention seeking behavior- attempting suicide and then blogging about it and then possibly posting it here and elsewhere.

also not sure how this story relates to hacking, computers, etc

Why didn't the college do more? Because it's a place intended for learning, not mental health rehabilitation.

The point of the post is to help other people dealing with the same thing. Colleges have populations of young people on their own for the first time dealing with new and extremely taxing issues. They have a responsibility to take mental health seriously and offer support. The same way a disabled student would be supported.

The word "university" has in it a form of "whole". As such, IMHO, this "place for learning" should strive toward teaching AND fostering coping mechanisms. Coping is, after all, and again IMHO, a key component to success. Tell us, without the basic will to live, what is success or "higher education"?

> I tried to kill myself at Penn because I felt so utterly alone.

If I was the only person on Earth, I wouldn't kill myself. Life isn't about feeling happy all the time.

Cool story.

It's kind of condescending to say something like that though because we have no direct understanding of how other people feel. Most people do not kill themselves. It's possible that those which try simply feel worse than those that do.

If you would feel way worse most of the time, then maybe you would kill yourself. And if you would not, is that morally superior behavior and if yes, why?

FWIW, I find being alone/lonely when surrounded by happy bustling people is much more crushing than being or feeling alone with no other people around.

In the latter case, you can kind of ignore it a little, in the former it's right in front of you, teasing you, but just out of reach.

Ah yes, the ol' "alone in a crowd" feeling. You're surrounded by people, but you can't relate to them and don't see them as being able to relate to you, even though it's statistically likely that some of them feel similar to you and put on a good face.

How about spending your entire life never feeling happy and "knowing" that it will never change.

You simply don't understand the mind of the depressed, so what you would do or wouldn't do doesn't matter in this discussion.

Suicidal ideation is, in general, not a choice a person makes. It's the result of a combination of depression and lack of inhibition, due to anything ranging from psychosis to extreme anxiety or stress. If you were sufficiently depressed and stressed from being the last person on Earth, you'd most likely commit suicide.

Is it possible to drive a lab monkey to suicide? I'm assuming suicidal people are usually in a state of learned helplessness from prolonged stress, which I understand is well understood in animal experiments.

Exactly, so the statement "I tried to kill myself at Penn because I felt so utterly alone." is probably wrong. I mean it's probably subjectively true, and it's informative, but loneliness probably didn't cause this person to attempt suicide.

That was her description of her subjective experience, but she made it clear that it was most likely due to the stress & anxiety.

Why would you doubt that loneliness was the problem? Man is a social mammal and isolation in such animals produces easily measured extreme stress. If unchecked it results in breakdown.

I don't get why you got downvoted.

Being alone is not "an issue", as the common status quo of occidental society tries to make us think.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I assume the following about the author: 1. He's an american. You were lucky to be born in a first-world country where you can really get to be EVERYTHING you want. Yeah, even with all the "McDonalds/Starbucks/DumbAmericans" criticism being born here gives you access to many things that 90% of the world population can only dream of. 2. He's a middle-class young man. Society, your family and the people that care for you set everything up so that you can go through this period of your life without worrying about anything else than GETTING BETTER AT THE THINGS THAT YOU LOVE in order to earn yourself a place in society that you will enjoy for the rest of your life. 3. "This same nurse was present when some of my friends came to visit to wish me a speedy recovery from my allergic reaction. After they left, she looked at me and said, “Look at all those friends you have!” " - He can be a cynical asshole as much as he would want, but the fact that he had people that took some time to visit him at the hospital because he was ill (i.e. FRIENDS) also makes him a very fortunate person.

What I'd like to say to the author of this post is this: I don't want to change your mind and I don't care, I just want to tell you what's going to happen next. Ten years from now you will meet someone who didn't have half the things that you have access to now, this person will be happy with his/her life and you will still be bitching about how terrible yours is "because of the government", "because of a significant other(or lack of it)", "because money", "because... because... because...". The day you stand in front of this person, you will see the person that you had been if you weren't just a little pussy and that day you will enter a state of depression that is nothing like you have ever experienced before; definitely not the kind of depression that you are used to see on your teen movies. And that day you will kill yourself... and that's it, that's you.

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