The death in an apparent suicide of another New York University student, Joanne Michelle Leavy, is a moment for reflection at the start of a new school year. Leavy plunged to her death from an upper floor of the Tisch School of the Arts, where she was a graduate student. This latest casualty is the seventh among the NYU student body in the last year, six of which have involved students jumping from buildings – four have been confirmed as suicides, one judged a drug related accident. A sophomore, Spenser Kimbrough, died last week after being rushed to NYU Downtown Hospital from his dormitory with suspicious symptoms. The Daily News reported that his mother, Valerie Kimbrough, is now calling for an investigation into her son’s death.

All New Yorkers, we would imagine, want some answers as well. The loss of life is shocking. But it’s not that uncommon. According to the authoritative Big Ten Student Suicide Study of university campuses, the overall student suicide rate is 7.5 for every 100,000. New York University, with its 48,000 students, could be expected to have about half that number. “National data show that NYU has had a relatively small number of suicides by students,” concludes an NYU self-study report that was prepared for the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and issued in March. Before this latest string of deaths, the university went seven years without a single suicide.

Still, it’s disturbing to contemplate that suicides are occurring at these rates on American campuses. According to the Centers for Disease Control, suicide rates have been rising among young people, nearly tripling between 1952 and 1995. In 1998, for example, suicide killed more teenagers and young adults than AIDS, cancer, heart disease, pneumonia, birth defects, stroke, influenza, and chronic lung disease combined. Some of those causes, like stroke and heart disease, occur mainly among oldsters. Yet suicide now ranks as the second leading cause of death among college students. With 14.8 million students enrolled in American colleges and universities in 2002, it has been estimated that 1,100 committed suicide.

Part of this story involves the growing rates of mental illness on America’s campuses. As the NYU self-study found, “students are more likely to arrive with emotional vulnerabilities of which the University should be aware” and the “use of psychotropic medication has expanded greatly within the last five years.” This observation seems to be consistent with national trends. The National Survey of Counseling Center Directors in 2001 found that 85% of counseling center directors surveyed reported an increase in severe psychological problems among students over the previous five years – as well as an increased prevalence of self-injury among students.

NYU has more extensive counseling services than many universities. But according to a report prepared by the director of the suicide prevention program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Paul Joffe, “Traditional provision of mental health services backed by traditional philosophies result in less than five percent of students most at risk receiving the standard-of-intervention.” Mr. Joffe has found that the “majority of those students who die by suicide will have advanced through the stages of their suicide careers, from initial intent to death, without having stepped into a single therapist’s office. At the University of Illinois from 1976 to 1984,95 percent of the 19 students who committed suicide did so without having met with a therapist.”

Since 1984, the University of Illinois has pursued a “policy of mandated assessment” that targets at-risk students and requires them to undergo treatment. The program has resulted in a 58% reduction in the suicide rate over a 19-year period.

These may be worthwhile programs – though they run the risk of creating a new legal liabilities for universities, some of which, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have already faced wrongful death lawsuits with regard to student suicides. It’s hard to imagine anything but the most intrusive college policies following the recognition of a college’s affirmative responsibility to guard against self-inflicted injuries on the part of its students. After all, this is not a problem unique to the academy. Young people attending college are about half as likely to commit suicide as their non-attending peers. Despite the latest tragedy at NYU, the greater crisis may be what’s plaguing our young people at large.