Wired on Friday: In the past month, two students at New York University have jumped to their deaths from the top balconies of the 10-storey campus library, writes Carol Power.
Both were young men. The first death on September 12th was of a 20-year-old junior from Evanston, Illinois. The second, on October 10th, was of an 18-year-old freshman from Irvine, California.
University officials are still struggling to understand what made them want to die.
Suicide is the second leading cause of death among college students in the US after accidental death. The rate of suicide among young males has tripled since 1970. There are four male suicides for every female suicide - however, at least twice as many females as males attempt suicide. Almost 1,100 suicides are projected to occur on campuses this year in the United States.
Three years ago, Phillip and Donna Satow established the Jed Foundation in New York after their son, Jed, committed suicide as a student in college in 1998. As the Satows looked into what pushed Jed beyond his ability to cope, they discovered that there were very few mental health resources available to students.
The Jed Foundation, which is a non-profit public charity, seeks to prevent suicide among college students and improve the mental health support available on campuses around the country and internationally. The foundation set up Ulifeline.org on the Web to link students to their college mental health centres and to allow them disseminate information in an anonymous way.
The site is being offered as a free resource to all universities and colleges.
The site includes a screening program called Self e-Valuator, which was developed by Duke University Medical Centre to help students uncover whether they or a friend are at risk from depression, substance abuse, eating disorders and other mental health problems affecting college-age students.
There is a question and answer section, Go Ask Alice, which has been produced by health educators at Columbia University and contains an archive of hundreds of responses to anonymously posted inquiries from college students worldwide.
More than 110 universities have signed to become members of the Ulifeline network, 90 are already online and 20 will go live in the next week or two.
Trinity College in Dublin is considering linking into the Ulifeline site. The current initiative at Trinity, which focuses on a peer support programme, seeks to empower students by equipping them with basic counselling and referral skills.
Research has shown that suicidal young adults are more likely to talk about their problems with a peer than a parent, teacher or counsellor.
"We can customise each Ulifeline website for a university campus," said Ron Gibori, director of Ulifeline.
Universities can sign up free via a submission form on the Web.
"Once we receive the information, which is sent to me, it is dropped into the central server which creates a website automatically and customised for that university," Mr Gibori said.
When a student logs on to the site, a drop-down box enables him to choose a university. A verification option ensures the student attends that university. Each university provides a direct link to its counselling centre.
The Ulifeline site was launched at the University of Arizona in autumn 2001. More than 300,000 pages were viewed during the site's first week. Now, the University of Arizona's Ulifeline site receives an average of 3,000 visitors a month compared to 120 who access the university's mental health centre site.
"Our usage has increased dramatically," Mr Gibori said. With all the universities on board, about 1.5 million students have access to the network. According to Mr Gibori, Ulifeline is helping with the "everyday stresses of being a college student".
