At 10:18 yesterday morning, on PostEverything, Elizabeth
Hawksworth, a Toronto-based writer, posted an article making the claims that
"It’s estimated that 1.5
students out of every 100 will commit suicide at some point during their college
career," and that "Suicide rates among college students have increased by 200 percent since
the 1950s."
For the casual reader, both of the cited statistics might
have been alarming. Thankfully, they are both wrong. As of this
morning (i.e. the next day) at 7:10 a.m., there has been no correction of
either.
Don't get me wrong -- Ms. Hawksworth has an important
message to convey, based on her own experience. Articles like this are
worth reading. But they should be accurate.
The first statistic -- 1.5% out of 100 will commit suicide
-- if true, would make college more dangerous than a military combat tour of
duty (ok, I don't have statistics on that, but I'm pretty sure fewer than one
in a hundred have died in recent wars). If you click on the link and
scroll around a bit, you find that the 1.5% relates to suicide attempts, which is obviously
going to be a much higher number. The link doesn't give a statistic for
how many commit suicide "at some point during their college career,"
but it does say that there are 1100 suicides at colleges per year, which is
7.5% out of 100,000 students (per year). We'd have to have additional
information to convert the "per year" figure to "at some point
during their college career," but in any event, it's clear that the actual
suicide rate is much lower than 1.5%. Still, 1100 is a lot of kids, and
that's something we should all worry about.
The author links to a secondary source -- http://collegedegreesearch.net/student-suicides/ for
these statistics, and collegedegreesearch.net cites additional secondary
sources. So it's hard to tell if the statistics they report are even
accurate.
Some of the commenters noticed this problem, but those
comments were not at the top of the comment list, so casual readers would have
missed them.
As for the second statistic -- that suicide rates among
college students have increased by 200 percent since the 1950s, that sounds
very believable to me, but that's not what the linked source says either.
The linked source (something with the "American Association of
Suicidology" logo) says:
"8. Youth (ages 15-24) suicide rates increased more
than 200% from the 1950’s to the late 1970’s. From the late 1970’s to the mid
1990’s, suicide rates for youth remained stable and, since then, have slightly
decreased."
So that's different on two counts -- first, it's not
talking about college students, it's just talking about "youth", and
second, the actual statistic makes it clear that the 200% increase occurred 35
years ago (between the 1950s and late 1970s) and that the rate has
"slightly decreased" since then.
But to add to the confusion, this statistic is inconsistent
with the statistic presented in her other source, which says that suicide rates
in the 15-24 age group have tripled since the 1950s.
It would be very interesting to have some honest statistics
about college students here, e.g. how suicide rates among college students
differ from non-college students in the same age group -- I had heard that the
prevalence of depression among college students has escalated, simply because
today there are medications available to control depression. But I don't
know which way that cuts -- if there are more depressed college students, maybe
that should mean more suicides, but if the medication is working, then maybe
not. But we're not getting helpful statistics here on PostEverything.
Suicide is serious and tragic, and public awareness of the
problem is important. But let's keep the statistics straight.
So what exactly is "PostEverything"? If
they are simply in the business of posting everything, then perhaps I shouldn't
complain. But the "Post" appears to stand for Washington Post,
and the "everything" just seems to be a reference to the scope of
possible subject matter. According to the kickoff description by Adam B. Kushner,
PostEverything "is
an attempt to expand the conversation outward," to topics like"
"Should we worry about the robot takeover of
U.S. jobs? Ask an economist. What are some of the dumbest things people
think about American foreign policy? Ask a political scientist. How do football
teams draft prospects, what does it feel like to confess to atheism in a deeply
religious place, is Russia really seeding Crimea with more Russian citizens,
and how did university sexual-assault policies get to be so daft? Ask the
people who are in a position to answer."
I still think they have a responsibility to read what is posted,
and get the author to make corrections as necessary.
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