Luke Tang, a 19-year-old Harvard University student, attempted to take his own life in 2015. Tang then signed a contract with the school promising to follow his doctors' treatment plan, but he didn't keep up with mental health services when he left school for summer break, and Harvard officials apparently did not check up with him upon his return in the fall. After two weeks on campus, he died by suicide.
Jenifer McKim, Senior Investigations Reporter and Senior Trainer at New England Center for Investigative Reporting, went behind the headlines to tell a broader story highlighted by Tang's death: student suicides are on the rise, but schools aren't tracking it.
"Basically, they say they don't have that information, because basically they can, they do have information of people who died, but they don't have details, cause of death, they'd get from a medical examiner," she said. "It would mean taking the step of making a phone call and asking for (cause of death), which they don't do. When we first called, they said we don't have this information at all."
Suicide is the second leading cause of death for college students across the United States. According to McKim's reporting, numbers are on the rise: In Massachusetts, 214 students between the ages of 18 and 24 died by suicide between 2007 and 2016, according to state public health records. That’s a 43 percent increase from the prior decade.
"We found in our data at UMass Amherst there were two years in that period of time where three students died of suicide in a single calendar year, which is a lot of students and really something that nobody is discussing."
