Students looking up ways to die. Is your college on this list?

I monitor the traffic from colleges to a page on my site written specifically to capture those searching for a particular way to kill themselves. I do this because suicide is the #2 cause of death at colleges and over the years, I have been able to identify trends and wondering if I might be able to see some patterns over time.

These are my statistics for my website only and don’t represent the volume of searches of this phrase.

I will put a link to the page I’m referring to but offer a trigger warning for vulnerable individuals. Here is the link. I also have pages that people find when looking for how to talk to a friend who is cutting, for example, and what to say or do. I know to write these posts because the students ask me these questions. And if they are asking me, I know they are asking Google, too.

I have statistics from the last four months of spring 2019 and in that time, close to 3,000 visited that page per month. I’ll compare it later to the fall of 2019. The only way I can track this is that the college or university is in the ISP, Internet Service Provider. I circled it below so you could see.

I filter the statistics by putting in keywords like college or university. So technical schools are not represented unless this is in their school name. Most colleges are in summer session now and therefore I won’t see as many college names since most students leave campus this time of year.

I have several pages that were written specifically to show up on Google because I know that mental health resources are not meeting the demand which is why I advocate people listening to each other and connecting. That alone can actually prevent suicide. Because there is a shortage of resources, people turn to Dr. Google.

But there is good news. Below, you will see someone visited the “how to” page and then clicked the link I have on that page to take them to an article about how to tell a parent they want to die. So instead of going back to google determined to find a way, they went to a page about how to tell a parent. That’s good news.

The one below is from University of Pennsylvania. This student spent 15 minutes on the site which is good news because in that time, that irrational suicidal ideation will usually subside.

This student looked up eating disorders on this site which has the highest mortality and suicide rate of any mental illness. So they looked up eating disorders category and went first to Kendall’s article about her best friend dying of anorexia, then to Tamara’s article about Logan and his eating disorder and landed finally on Carly’s article about recovery from an eating disorder.

From this, we can surmise that it’s probably a student who suffers from an eating disorder and was having thoughts of suicide. Maybe he or she found hope here?

I have also seen people who’ve clicked on the link to call the suicide hotline 1-800-273-8255 or text the crisis text line 741-741 although I did not see that indicated in the activity from colleges during this four month period.

There are 105 colleges on the list

One hundred five students (or faculty) that have visited that page from February to the end of May. Not all of these are U.S. based since this site has international reach. The page I have referred to above is ranked #6 on Google for many variations of the title of that page.

Aberystwyth University

Acadia University

Alvernia University

Babson College

Binghamton University

Boston University

Bournemouth University

Brigham Young University Hawaii

California Polytechnic State University

Cardiff University

Central Methodist University

Central Washington University

Chapman University

Columbia University

DTU Danish Technical University

Duke University

Eastern Kentucky University

Esdal College

Falmouth University

Fitchburg State University

George Mason University

Gonzaga University

Grand Canyon University

Hartpury College

Hofstra University

Humboldt State University

Indiana State University

Kennesaw State University

Kenyon College

Lebanon Valley College

Louisiana State University

Macalester College

Maharishi Dayanand University Rohtak

Marquette University

McDaniel College

Missouri State University

New York University

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY ABU DHABI – ABU DHABI Foreign

North Carolina State University

Ohio State University

Oxford University

Pacific Lutheran University

Point Park University

Princeton University

Quinnipiac University North Haven Campus

Ripon College

Roehampton University

Royal Military College of Canada

Rutgers University

Sam Houston State University

Savannah College of Art and Design

Southern Arkansas University

Spartanburg Methodist College

St Mary’s University

St. Petersburg College

Texas Christian University

The College of William and Mary

The George Washington University

The University of Manchester

The University of Tennessee, Memphis

The University of Western Ontario

Trinity College

University College Dublin

University of Alabama

University of Bath

University of British Columbia

University of Calgary

University of California at Berkeley

University of California, San Diego

University of Cambridge

University of Chicago

University of Cincinnati

University of Colorado

University of Connecticut

University of Durham

University of Florida

University of Hertfordshire

University of Hertfordshire

University of Kent

University of Liverpool

University of Maine System

University of Massachusetts

University of Minnesota

University of New Hampshire

University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center

University of Pennsylvania

University of Plymouth

University of Reading

University of Redlands

University of Rhode Island

University of South Carolina

University of St. Thomas

University of Stirling

University of Tennessee

University of Toledo

University of Toronto

University of Vermont

University of Wales Trinity Saint David

University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point, WI

University of Wisconsin Madison

Washington & Lee University

York University

What to say to someone who tells you they are cutting