- 51% of college students have experienced suicidal thoughts
- LGTBQIA+ students (71 percent) are are nearly 1.6X as likely as straight students (45 percent) to have experienced suicidal thoughts
- For students who have experienced suicidal thoughts, classes are the primary source of stress (47 percent)
Suicide is the second leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 10 and 24, and suicide rates have increased in almost every state since 1999. For Mental Health Awareness Month, we analyzed students’ responses and found that half (51 percent) of college students say they’ve experienced suicidal thoughts. LGBTQIA+ students are also significantly more likely to experience suicidal thoughts than straight students (71 percent vs. 45 percent). These findings highlight the importance of having quality mental health services on campus and breaking the stigma around mental health.
A recent College Pulse poll conducted among 61,595 students currently attending four-year colleges or universities across the United States stated, “I have experienced suicidal thoughts.” Those who responded had the option to choose “this applies to me,” “this does not apply to me,” “not sure,” or “prefer not to say.”
Diving deeper into the data offers some insights into students’ main stressors. We used College Pulse Insights — the company’s predictive intelligence and statistical analysis platform — to correlate this survey’s questions with the more than 15,000 variables in its database. This shows that students who have experienced suicidal thoughts are significantly more likely than other students to say financial issues or health-related issues are the primary source of their stress, but school work and classes remains the biggest stressor.
Depression is “one of the most common mental disorders” in the United States, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. “Current research suggests that depression is caused by a combination of genetic, biological, environmental, and psychological factors,” the institute’s website says, adding that “thoughts of death or suicide” is one of the symptoms of depression. From 2013 to 2016, 8.1 percent of American adults aged 20 and over had depression, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In order to #BreakTheStigma, college students need to know that depression is a common and treatable mental disorder.
If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts, call 1-800-273-8255 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. For the Trevor Lifeline, a suicide prevention counseling service for the LGBTQ community, call 1-866-488-7386.
To receive regular updates and key college student insights, sign up here.
Methodology: This poll was designed and conducted by College Pulse. Interviews were conducted among a sample of 61,595 full-time and part-time students attending four-year colleges or universities in the U.S. who are part of College Pulse’s American College Student Panel. To reduce the effects of any non-response bias, a post-stratification adjustment was applied based on demographic distributions from the 2017 Current Population Survey (CPS). The post-stratification weight rebalanced the sample based on the following benchmarks: age, race and ethnicity, and gender. The sample weighting was accomplished using an iterative proportional fitting (IFP) process that simultaneously balances the distributions of all variables. Weights were trimmed to prevent individual interviews from having too much influence on the final results.
About College Pulse: College Pulse is a leading online survey and analytics company dedicated to understanding the attitudes, preferences, and behaviors of today’s college students. College Pulse offers custom data-driven marketing and research solutions, utilizing its unique American College Student Panel and online analytics platform which provides insight to brands, companies, and organizations. College Pulse’s platform includes 240,000 undergraduate college student respondents from more than 800 four-year colleges and universities in all 50 states. To learn more about College Pulse, please contact Jake@collegepulse.com.
