As of the autumn 2017 semester, Ohio State had 66,444 students.
According to Ohio State's own Suicide Prevention Program, one percent of these students have attempted suicide in the past year.
That's about 664 students who have tried to kill themselves. I can't even find the statistics on how many completed.
That's the thing. A lot of suicides are not reported as suicides. They're reported as accidents, so the reported number does not represent the actual statistic. Instead of someone being clinically depressed and feeling so helpless that they swallow a bottle of pills, it's someone "falling" off of a parking garage.
We're in college. We understand the stress and pressure of trying to balance academics, jobs, activities, and a social life. Being in a place that keeps a closed door on the mental health issue only makes us feel like we can't talk about it too, which shouldn't be the case at all.
There's this terrible stigma around mental illness, especially in college. As students, we think that we need to be independent and that asking someone for help lessens that independence. We want to be accepted by our peers and not be that person who's depressed and ruins the fun. We want to look perfect to everyone looking in on us, and it's hard to accept that it's impossible to do that.
Instead of talking about all of this, we isolate it. We compartmentalize all these terrible feelings we have because we're convinced that there's not another person on this entire campus who has felt the same way before, which sucks because sometimes it's much easier to open up to a friend than to a parent or therapist.
We need a mental health discussion to know we're not alone in our struggles. We also need the proper resources to get help when we need it.
I'm beyond proud of the fact that Ohio State has its own counseling services. But unfortunately, we don't have enough counselors to accommodate the massive student population we have. I've heard stories where people have had to wait three to four weeks for a session. I've also heard of instances where people have had a session with a counselor who tells them they need to go seek therapy elsewhere because they simply do not have the resources to help them.
The Counseling and Consultation Services is not at fault here. This is a resource distribution problem by the university. We need better funding to improve mental health services and make sure students get the help they need.
I love Ohio State, and it hurts me to say that it needs to do so much more when it comes to mental health. In the past couple of weeks, two people have jumped off of the top of a parking garage, and the school's solution was to make the garage more safe, not to provide better services to the students so these instances are prevented in the first place. Mental health should be a priority, not an afterthought to a tragedy.
We need these resources. We need these discussions. All of us need to do better in regards to mental health.
So OSU, let's talk.