Columbia, Barnard Advance Suicide Prevention Efforts

In the wake of the tragic suicide last Saturday, Barnard and Columbia are promoting their suicide prevention and outreach programs.

Students of both schools have access to trained counselors. “In a college age population, 95 percent of suicides ... are associated with psychiatric disorder,” Richard Eichler, Ph. D and director of Counseling and Psychological Services at Columbia said. “Those disorders, by and large are quite treatable.”

He said the most difficult component of suicide prevention is prompting students to take advantage of those resources. Eichler pointed out two main impediments that prevent students from taking this step: “One is cultural. There is still a lot of stigma associated with having a psychiatric disorder. The second thing we have to struggle with is when people are depressed, they tend to feel unworthy. They tend to feel they don’t deserve help.”

In attempting to overcome these barriers, Columbia placed counseling offices in four undergraduate residence halls, and Barnard placed its Rosemary Furman Counseling Center in its Quad. Columbia’s new rapid-access telephone appointment system guarantees that students will speak with a counselor by telephone within 24 hours of their initial call.

“It gives us a chance to make an initial connection,” Eichler said. Barnard also guarantees an appointment within 24 hours of a call. “We ask them [student callers] when they’d like to be seen,” Dr. Mary Commerford, director of the Furman Center said. “If they indicate that day or the next day, we find a time for them. If they indicate it’s not urgent, most are seen within a week.”

This fall, Columbia began its participation in the National Depression Collaborative, a consortium of 20 schools that screens for depression in primary care. Eichler said that this gives the University an opportunity to destigmatize depression. “We’ll screen for STDs, we’ll screen for heart disease, because we know it’s good medicine,” Eichler said. “And since depression is one of the major health risks for college students we ought to be screening for it like everything else.”

Meanwhile, Barnard has created a Students of Concern Committee, advised by staff from the counseling center and other confidential members, which meets weekly. “They bring up students who they hear aren’t doing well academically, or may be having trouble with residence halls, and we talk about what steps can we take to help them,” Commerford said.

Commerford also mentioned the importance of stress management, particularly through Barnard’s Well-Woman offices, which focus on health promotion and stress management. In addition, substance abuse awareness programs are integral to suicide prevention, Eichler said. “Substance abuse really increases the risk of suicide. So any program that’s about reducing substance abuse—especially alcohol abuse—is also a suicide prevention program.”

Both Barnard and Columbia offer their students alcohol and substance abuse awareness programs.

There is a consensus that the whole community has to be involved in the screening process. Any department that interacts with students should be trained to identify when a student may need help. “Even the financial aid office. You may not think of them in terms of suicide prevention, but we do because financial stress is enormous and it has such a global effect on students,” Commerford said.

Eichler cited athletes who know their teammates well, and residence life staffers that live with students as crucial in bringing help to students in need. Both schools offer 24-hour emergency care. Columbia’s clinic hours are from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., and dorm drop-in hours are from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Barnard’s counseling center clinic hours run from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and listening hours run from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. in Plimpton Hall on Tuesdays and in Elliot Hall on Wednesdays. After 10 p.m., all students may call Nightline, a student-run peer counseling and referral hot line.

Both schools have after-hours psychological emergency lines that students can call at any time. “There’s 24 hour emergency coverage,” Eichler said. “What prevention really is about, in most instances, is getting people intervention in a timely fashion.”

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