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Introduction

One of the main causes of stress is getting used to the new life which we have suddenly landed in. For most college students it’s the first time that they have lived outside the nurturing and protective security of the family unit. Their parents used to provide for them materially and used to set down boundaries on how to live. This no longer applies in college and one of the first tasks that they should undertake is to find an identity and effectively test the rules that were set out by their parents.



The uncertainty and lack of identity is a common cause of stress for them. School-related issues also cause stress for students these days. It can be caused by them doing so badly in college that they gave up all hope of doing something worthwhile with their lives, or it could be caused by just not living up to their own standards. Stress also creates the way people deal with things like smoking and drinking, which are worse ways of dealing with stress. These things sometimes lead college students to become depressed. Sometimes the multitude of life’s changes that occur during your college years can trigger serious depression.



The college atmosphere can be detrimental to someone dealing with depression because social life revolves around “keggers”, parties and going to bars. Because alcohol is a depressant, it only deepens the depression and hides its symptoms. When college students first became depressed, they tend to spend their weekends drinking. It consumes them throughout the week as they “suffer” through classes they have signed up for, when Sunday evenings came around and the weekend is typically over, and the depression comes back as it once did, or in some cases it comes back worse then before.



According to a study done in 2003 by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, alcohol-dependent individuals are almost 4 times more likely to have a major depressive disorder than those who are not dependent. The study also found that alcohol abuse was more common among students who had been diagnosed with depression than among those who had not. Alcohol and some drugs are very desirable to college students because it gets rid of the anxiety and stress of what they are doing in college. But most do not know that once the effects of these drugs disappear the depression comes back and they’re only left with that until they get their next drink or their next hit. But sometimes it’s just not enough to keep them from committing suicide.



Suicide is the second leading cause of death for college students. And the number one cause of suicide for college student suicides as well as suicides in general is untreated depression. Going to college can be a difficult transition period in which students may feel lost, lonely, confused, anxious, inadequate, and stressed. And these problems may lead to depression. And again, untreated depression is the number one cause for suicide.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Suicidal Broken Bridges


College- the Bridge between puberty and life, the point in time student’s level of stress from classes increase causing depression number rise with the everlasting push of families, and suicide becomes a more legitimate option affecting the future.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death in college students, mostly due to stress from college, taking the lives of 10 people today and the 3971 people a year according to U.S. Suicide Statistics.

An increase in numbers of suicides is also shown in an increase in stress level. In colleges around the nation you see a various amount of stress towards the college students and their educational sources. According to a freshman at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, SD her stress levels nearly doubled in the transition from high school, at 4 out of 10, to college, to an 8 out of 10.

Students from Augustana College, North Carolina Central University and Bluffton University notice that with an increase in stress they begin to develop mood swings, irritability and other symptoms of depression.

Depression numbers are increasing from the constant push from families to succeed, or the push from teachers to focus time on their subject is leading students to one option, suicide.

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