KXAN (Austin’s local NBC affiliate) just ran a story on their 5pm news titled “Suicide contemplation rates surprising”. It was based on research just released by the University of Texas which surveyed 26,000 college students at 70 colleges and universities. I hope to get a copy of the research and share more of it here, but here are the stats reported in the KXAN story:

• over half of the 26,000 students have considered suicide
• 18% of them have seriously considered suicide
• 8% of them have attempted suicide
• only 25% of completed suicides have previously sought out counseling, therefore 75% never sought professional help

If UT’s student population is 50,000, then the 8% figure means that over 4,000 students at UT have attempted suicide at some point in the past. According to KXAN, the study also says that 4% of graduate students and 6% of undergraduates have seriously considered suicide within the past year.

If you’re wanting to help us lower these rates and prevent suicide among college and high school students, please let me know so I can add you to our email lists.