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College Life is Hazardous to my Teen's Health!

by Dr. Chris E. Stout

Suicide

• Estimated 1,100 student deaths annually [1]
• Suicide is the second leading cause of death among North Americans of college age [2]
• Annual rate of one per ten thousand nationwide [2]
• For every successful suicide, there are forty failed attempt [2]
• Some colleges ask those who've disclosed thoughts of suicide to withdraw ... inadvertently keep students from seeking help [1]
• At. Harvard, from 2001 to 2003, visits by undergraduates to the mental health counseling center had increased 30 percent to 4,871 students [2]
• Julie Carpenter died in April 2001, she was the sixth suicide at MIT in four years [2]
• Before that, Elizabeth Shin had emolliated herself at MIT and in 2004, the Shin family sued MIT for $27 million [2]

Depression

• A study of college mental health reported incidents of depression and suicidal thoughts doubled during the nineties [2]
• Average age of depression's onset dropped from 29 to 20 in just two decades [2]

Alcohol

• Each year 2.8 million college students drive drunk [1]
• 1,700 die from alcohol-related injuries [1]
• Hospitalization for alcohol overdoes has become a regular feature of weekend life at even the best colleges [2]
• By winter break in 2003, more than twenty Hamilton students had been carted off to area hospitals for treatment of alcohol overdoses – seven in one weekend alone [2]
• Dartmouth, with 4400 undergraduates, was admitted on average about 200 alcohol emergencies a year [2]
• Middlebury, with 2300 students, had about 100 ER transports in the 2002-2003 academic year [2]
• Before Thanksgiving in 2004, Pomona College had sent nine to the ER – more than twice its total alcohol hospitalizations the entire previous year and the highest number in eleven years [2]
• More often these days, college kids die from drinking's secondary effects, drowning in one's own vomit [2]

Drugs

• Use of narcotics ... back up to record levels [1]
• 29 percent say they have used prescription drugs recreationally [1]
• ... drug use in high school is also up [1]
• In 2001, roughly 15 percent of college students reported using Ecstasy – more than a sevenfold increase from a decade earlier [2]
• The bad news, was that Ecstasy occasionally set off psychotic episodes and appeared to have some long-term – perhaps permanent – effect on the body's serotonin levels, meaning it might lead to chronic depression ad permanent personality change [2]
• College Ecstasy scene faded but it did not disappear completely [2]

Sexuality

• Half a million engage in unprotected sex [1]
• 100,000 students are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape [1]
• Use of Rohypnol (roofies) or gamma hydroxybutyrate (GHB, often called G), the best known of the so-called date rape drugs. Between 1998 and 2000, emergency room admissions in the United States for GHB quadrupled [2]

Eating Disorders

• Over the course of a lifetime, about 0.5 to 3.7 percent of girls and women will develop anorexia nervosa [3]
• About 1.1 to 4.2 percent will develop bulimia nervosa [3]
• About 0.5 percent of those with anorexia die each year as a result of their illness, making it one of the top psychiatric illnesses that lead to death [3]

Cutting

• 4 in 100 Americans will harm themselves at some time in their lives [4]

References

• 1) Smart Money magazine, September 2006 issue
• 2) Binge by Barrett Seaman
• 3) Taylor CB, et al. Prevention of Eating Disorders in At-risk College-age women. Archives of General Psychiatry. August 2006.
• 4) www.cutthemovie.com 8/15/2006

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