Ithaca, New York -- Two suspected cases of suicide on
the Cornell University campus have officially been confirmed by the
Tompkins County chief medical examiner, bringing the total number of
suicides for the academic year to six.
Cornell officials had
previously said authorities confirmed four other deaths at the school as
suicides.
The medical examiner says his office has been in touch
with the families of the latest suicide victims.
"They have all
been made aware of the manner of death," Dr. Howard Socoff told CNN.
The rash of cases has rocked the highly competitive Ivy League
school in central New York State.
The most recent suicides came
on successive days and prompted the university's mental health
initiatives director, Timothy Marchell, to declare a "public health
crisis."
In February, a freshman jumped off a bridge over one of
the area's well-known gorges. The body of a sophomore engineering major
was found March 11 under similar circumstances. Police are also
searching for a body in another suicide witnessed March 12.
David
Skorton, who became president of Cornell in 2005, has been praised by
counselors for encouraging openness on an issue that many schools try to
cover up.
In an e-mail to students on Friday, he encouraged them
to use available suicide-prevention resources.
Skorton placed
full-page ads in the university newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun, every
day this week, which read, "If you learn anything at Cornell, please
learn to ask for help. It is a sign of wisdom and strength."
The
message may be getting through. The first sentence of the quote has been
written in chalk on one of the bridges where the suicides took place.
The cause of the wave of suicides is unclear, Marchell said.
The
national average for school suicides is 7.29 per year for every 100,000
students, said Paula Clayton, medical director of the American
Foundation for Suicide Prevention. That means Cornell, with 19,639
students, should average fewer than two suicides a year.
Cornell
had no suicides from 2005 to 2008, according to Marchell. And the school
has consistently fallen within or below the national average, said
Karen Carr, assistant dean of students at Cornell.
The school has
been praised by psychologists such as Keith Anderson, chairman of the
American College Health Association's Mental Health Best Practices Task
Force, for counseling and prevention programs that confront the issue of
student suicide with comprehensive training and understanding.
Cornell
responded to a cluster of suicides in the late 1990s with comprehensive
training for members of the university community.
Everyone on
campus, including janitors, administrators, residential advisers and
professors, is trained to look for symptoms of depression. Freshmen are
screened for indicators of psychological disorders, and multiple
counseling services are available for students in need.
"I know
that they've been doing a lot of outreach efforts to educate the
community. Cornell is kind of a model in some ways," said Anderson, a
staff psychologist at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, New
York.
In response to the current wave of suicides, Cornell will
"strengthen the capacity of the community to know what to do," Marchell
said. "They will be showing nonmental health professionals what role
they can play and help students and faculty get the kind of support that
they need."
The school also has posted guards to monitor the
bridges over the gorges.
On Wednesday, campus
clubs such as Cornell Minds Matters took part in a schoolwide event to
promote mental health awareness.
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