5 Bristol university student suicides since the start of this academic year. Why?

[Restorativepowersoftea]

This is so sad and such a shock. Why so many at Bristol though?

Actually. I quite agree with you, I was meaning the people who want to be in the in crowd, but aren't. And I think the whole "going to uni with a crowd of mates from your school" thing, which didn't happen when I was young, massively contributes to leaving people feeling excluded.

DD is a total geek (who happens to be good looking and a bit daft fun). So I think she has got accidentally gathered up into the in crowd and they are not at all her people. She is genuinely shocked by the bitchiness (mocking people for what they wear or the music they like): because she has no concept of trying to be cool and fitting in.

Can you knit her a really unflattering jumper and suggests she joins the bell ringers?

Many eons ago I went to Bristol. At that time all 1st year students were in catered halls or with university approved landladies. In my time there I remember only one suicide of a girl who had dropped out, and was in a psychiatric hospital.
I think there might be something correct about the lack of resilience among many young people nowadays.
When I went you got yourself sorted out with sending luggage in advance, travelling independently, making new friends. Very few of us had anyone else from our schools there, certainly not in the same year. For most of us we were the first in our families to go to university, and hadn't lived away from home before.

Actually. Believe me, she has lots of horrid jumpers. She tells me she has joined the women's group and is currently playing Santana very loudly and publicly admitting that she loathes grime. She says she is reclaiming herself.

Excellent.

As usual there is a lot of assumptions being made on this thread that are not as reported in the papers. It appears the student lived at home. She was studying French and Italian and was in her third year. On that course the third year is spent abroad but she was at home. My DD did exactly this course and was not at home at the end of March but depending how the student organised the year abroad I guess you could be at home in March.

If she was at a university abroad she would have attended courses there and would have been in the second semester. Only if the Student is at a university do they take exams abroad. They do have to submit work to Bristol on a topic of their choice regarding the country they lived in and should discuss it with their supervisors. No-one from Bristol is with them on the year abroad. It needs resiliance to complete this year successfully and it just may be this student was struggling with this aspect of the course. It is not as if she was a first year and it would be difficult to access services abroad. Any university with Erasmus students doesn't have tutors abroad. You have to be strong to do this year and it is not for everyone and maybe not someone living at home who may feel a particular wrench.

I don't think Bristol is an uncaring university but it does not hold your hand either. It is such sad news but Bristol is not alone with student suicides.

It is very sad news but, as bojorojo said, this student was reported as being 21, so not a first year (not that that makes it any less sad, but it challenges the story of new students being unsupported). My DS is at Bristol and is having a great time, so I don't think we should panic that this is an all-out generational crisis. There were plenty of students having breakdowns and getting counselling when I was at university 30 years ago. It's always been a difficult time for young people.

Hmm, I have had one go through Uni and have one there now. And also I know their mates, and my mates' kids who are at Uni, etc. My observation is that students seem much more stressed out and unhappy than we were 30 years ago.

Which is not to say that many students are not having a great time. But I think increasing numbers are struggling.

In the time I was at uni I knew two people (as in knew them rather than knew of them) who committed suicide. One was an Oxford student and the other was at Bristol. Both were boys. In my experience then and from what I see now, I don't think it possible to say students are 'much more' stressed out. Perhaps it's our perspective as parents of students which is different, or perhaps I'm just wrong.

I don't think it possible to say students are 'much more' stressed out.

This is not the experience of university academics though.

There has been a huge increase in the percentage of students reporting stress and anxiety in the last 20 years since I've been an academic. You should say that the stress and anxiety were always there - it has just become more acceptable to talk about it, and ask for help - and to some extent this is indeed true.

But in my day to day experience there has been a very rapid rise not just in the number of students reporting mental health issues but in the number of students showing evidence of mental health problems.

Well I did say I might be wrong and might be overly influenced by personal experience but certainly the acceptability of talking about issues has changed dramatically as has the attitude and understanding of academics likewise. Also of course, different institutions have different rates of incidence of issues, so all these things will influence perception. But as I say, I could be wrong. I hope not, because enough students seemed to be troubled back when I was a student. They've certainly now locked up Magdalen Tower which they only used to do in exam time, but whether that's a sign of a greater incidence of fatalities or simply a modern and sensible precaution I don't know. It's a ghastly subject.

One thing I have noticed is that the 18-24 generation are far more concerned with savings, jobs etc than the generation above (i.e. When they're polled) so that and the huge debts they incur now may make things stressful

And I might be wrong too. The teens/students I know fortunately seem ok, but I do know of less happy students. I'm not really in a position to judge numbers, I just felt that there was a rush to judgment about the support at this university.

I left school in the mid-1980s and knew of boys who didn't leave their rooms for days on end (not sure how he ate), people who dropped out & people who committed suicide. I think young people now are far more concerned with where they are going to live as general standards of living are so much higher. Grades seem to be far more important and global travel/migration mean there is far more competition for places at university and for employment.

There are so many more students with MH issues compared with when most of us probably studied. There's support, but people have to know you need it. Students can just bottle things up while appearing fine socially, some aren't aware of how bad things have got for them, some don't know where to go for help.

Students have already had the pressure of up to 5 years of external exams before they even start university. Getting a place at a good university should feel like you've arrived somewhere, then you start again at the bottom of the pecking order. Deadlines and exam timetables are more pressured. Everything's expensive. It can be lonely and students are often worried about telling parents they are struggling after the financial commitment they've made, and after everybody has heard about their great course. It takes a lot of nerve for some people to find help/speak up.

Five years of external exams? Surely three at the most - GCSEs, AS and A level. Just curious as to what the five are.

I'm sorry to hear that so many students are suffering so much and wonder how much the exam pressure is to blame (it seems, from reading threads on here, that many children's lives are expected to be non-stop revision for all of Year 11), and how much life lived in the glare of social media contributes.

However if you are a year 3 student and 21 the above does not apply. If this young lady was in the middle of her year abroad then she had completed y2 successfully and those exams count. The year abroad is largely down to the student to organise if they don't go to an Erasmus university. Finding somewhere to live abroad can be hard and making friends is not always easy. Not everyone succeeds in this.

I think as numbers at university have soared it is likely that students with MH difficulties will have increased in actual numbers. It is inevitable. I feel that some potential students should think very carefully about the demands of the course they are starting and whether life at university is right for them. There is a lot more pressure to go to university now. I went to a grammar school and about 50% went to university. That would be unheard of now in lots of schools. Clearly living at home is a more protected environment than living at university and as we don't know what has happened in this case, it may, of course, have nothing to do with university study.

5 years is school exams (3 years) plus y1 and y2 at university. These exams must be passed.

No, goingmad said students had had five years of external exams before they even started at university. That's what I was querying.

Ok. I don't get that either! There are 5 years of exams though!

And they are very good at pastoral care.

Different people have different experiences don't they? My DD didn't know a single student who struggled. They were all happy and had a great time and were challenged by the degree at the same time. No-one was intense, worked all hours or didn't socialise. When you get to Y3 on a MFL course you have successfully completed two years and it could be the pastoral care was great in those two years and we do not know what went wrong when the student was away from university. It may be some other catastrophe.

a lot of talk on this thread about the one student - but there were 5 this year and more last year. That would cause me some concern about the university's support services. They may actually be wonderful and it is simply that they have high achieving anxious students but I dont know of this problem happening at my child's Cambridge college, which also had high achieving students.

Cambridge has had suicides at times and when that happens there needs to be a review of support. I don't know if Bristol has student "families", for example, but they can provide some support for students.

I think that plenty of teenagers struggle at school. With friendships and their studies. With their image of themselves. With relationships and their parents. These problems don't magically disappear when they go to university and have many additional responsibilities.