College Suicide Research Paper

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College Student Suicide Suicide is when a person purposely decides to cause his or her own death. It is often done out of depression, anger, and especially stress. Unfortunately, it has become extremely common for college students to turn to suicide as an answer to their stress issues. Through the history, recent statistics, and present health centers there are evident positive and negative changes in the increase and decrease of suicide. Suicide has been influenced by broader cultural views including religion, honor, and the meaning of life. Many Christian religions consider suicide an offense towards God due to religious belief in the sanctity of life. In the West it was often regarded as a serious crime. On the contrary, during the samurai era in Japan, it was respected as a means of payment for failure or as a form of protest (Suicide). Suicide has definitely been increasing throughout the past years. Suicide rates, for 15-24 year olds, have more than doubled since the 1950’s, and remained largely stable at these higher levels between the late 1970’s and the mid 1990’s. In the past 60 years, the suicide rate has quadrupled for males 15 to 24 years old, and has doubled for females of the same age (CDC, 2002). Suicide rates for those 15-19 years old increased 19% between 1980 and 1994. Since the peak in 1994 with 11.0 suicides per 100,000, there has been a 34% decrease. In 2004, the rate was 8.2 per 100,000. The immense change in suicides among young adults have proven to, unfortunately, be rapidly increasing. Sadly, suicide has become the second leading cause of death among college students, accidents being first. According to a top mental health official, suicides outnumber homicides in the United States. The U.S. Department of Education reported there were 4,861 colleges and universities with 18,248,128 students in the United States in 2007. But a small

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