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I'm a college professor...just learned one of my students committed suicide this a.m.


tabbico

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I am a college professor, and I just found out that one of my students committed suicide this morning. He was an "A" student, well-liked, and I am devastated because I have no idea why he did this. This is as much of a vent as anything - I am in shock right now.

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HokeyReligions

I am so sorry. I can understang how shocking it is. I remember "that" phone call a few years ago myself. A friend - out of college for a few years - put a gun to her head. She was super-smart, honor society, popular, funny, ..... I'll never understand it.

 

Have you talked to a counselor? I know in high schools when there is a death like this the students and teachers are required to talk to counselors. I don't know about colleges - but I'm sure the resources are there for you. You may need to talk with a counselor just so you will be more comfortable handling the questions, confusion, and pain that your other students feel.

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I hear of this happening often, out of nowhere. There is simply no way of knowing what goes on in the minds of people who otherwise seem normal and untroubled. Nevertheless, such loss is hurtful and shocking. It can never be taken as business as usual. Teen suicide in high school is also not uncommon. It's a time of great change and challenge in the lives of many who just aren't able to cope for one reason or another. Sometimes there are signs...sometimes not.

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If you have nothing to look forward to... then why exist? Sure, good grades, honor socieities, and the likes make it seem like our kind is happy, but ultimately there is something else we cannot attain, no matter how much we try. This is from a personal experience. I'm on medication now... for social axiety disorder and severe depression, but sometimes it still doesn't help. Every night having the same awful nightmares and not being able to sleep because of thoughts that are keeping me up.

 

I'm going to get more help, but I also tried the easy way out, but it did not work for me. At the time, it's like nothing else matters.

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2SidestoStories

Tabbico: My condolences for you in this. Often times the people who are experiencing such horrors in their own lives believe that they can never be good enough; that life is not good enough, and so forth. Frequently, the description of the individual by friends /family/ acquaintences include things like, "Smart, funny, great students, etc." The truth is that for a number of people, those 'tools' that are present in a non-depressed individual's mind to cope with tragedies, losses, and the various pains of life in general; clinical depression is an illness, and one that holds such a tremendous amount of stigma that most people, whether or not they're aware of their tendency toward depression, will refuse to seek help for it.

 

Bill: I wholeheartedly commend you for being willing to let yourself get the help you deserve to have. I feel rather strongly about depression as an illness, and do not intend to come off as implying somehow that I view it as something that makes anyone less of a person than anyone else; there are often purely logical, sometimes even physiological reasons behind it, and it must be tremendously difficult for you to have to cope with not being sure day in and day out that you're going to have the strength of will to get out of bed. I will keep my fingers crossed that you and your physician/psychiatrist/whomever you're seeing will be able to find you the appropriate levels of medicine, and that perhaps even at some point, you will not need the medicine for your body to let you live your life.

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