SGA hears about suicide prevention

The majority of time spent on this SGA meeting centered on suicide prevention and a bill that saw a some debate with emotion behind its amendments. The meeting began with a presentation by Dr. Jameson Hirsch on suicide prevention and his findings regarding information surrounding the subject.

“Suicide is the 11th leading cause of death nationally,” Hirsch said. “So, when you think about cancer, AIDS, diabetes, and other chronic diseases, suicide is right up there.”

Hirsch also talked about the difficulties college students have because of the extreme changes that they face.

“People are away from their support system and under academic pressure,” he said. “The college experience can be a hotbed of difficulties for students to cope.”

Hirsch spoke about how he has been involved in research at ETSU over the past few years regarding suicide, substance abuse and coping characteristics on campus.

“One of the most concerning things is that we have mild, moderate and severely depressed people on campus,” he said.

Hirsch spoke about how suicide is not always caused by depression, but that loneliness is something that comes into play as well. He said that when he spoke with students about if they think about suicide, the results he received were a bit alarming.

“We asked students how likely was it that you would attempt suicide in the future because we are trying to predict future suicide outlets,” Hirsch said. “We have about 10 percent of people saying they would consider it.”

Hirsch spoke about the various outlets and avenues his research is taking, as well as how groups he is involved with are stepping up their suicide prevention and awareness efforts.

“We have some initiatives in housing, we are currently in the process of administering a survey to residents to get a baseline sense of what their levels of mental illness are when dealing with coping,” Hirsch said. “We are also working to train RAs and RDs in suicide prevention training as well as QPR training which teaches people what to do when they see someone in distress.