North Carolina State University ended its school year on a tragic note, with 14 deaths among its student body.
Mick Kulikowski, NC State’s director of strategic communications and media relations, said among those deaths were seven suicides, two overdoses, four deaths from natural causes, and one student who died in a car accident.
Students and mental health experts described the losses as staggering, tragic, and a concerning example of national trends in student mental health.
“I really started feeling it once it got to the fourth student death, because it really started to feel like it was an epidemic on campus at that point,” said Mariana Fabian, a fourth-year student and opinion editor for NC State’s student newspaper, The Technician.
Classes continued throughout the year despite the mounting number of deaths. However, the school created a task force devoted to mental health in November that released an 89-page report earlier this year that recommended a flurry of proposals to improve student life, ABC News report.
The report’s sobering conclusion: while NC State is “dedicated” to improving student mental health, “there is not only room for, but also a need for, additional efforts.”
The school set out occasional wellness days and offered outreach programs following the deaths. However, the campus resumed college life activities.
“We’re having to say goodbye to the students but also focus on turning in an assignment,” junior Angelina Cordone told ABC News.
Certain communities on campus may have taken the losses harder, such as the School of Engineering. Three students who died by suicide were students in the program, and four others also passed.
The University has a population of more than 36,000 students and averages eight student deaths, including three by suicide, annually since 2018, according to the task force’s report.
“I think a lot of people really want to honor the lives that were lost, but there was also a big feeling of enough is enough,” said Eleanor Lott, a sophomore and a member of NC State’s mental health task force.
In late March, Vice Chancellor and Dean Doneka Scott told ABC News the year was a tragic “outlier,” referencing the nationwide challenge of educating students amid an uptick in depression and suicide among young people.
“Institutions across the country are grappling with this,” Scott said. “This is not an NC State-only issue. It’s an issue in higher education writ large.”
ABC News interviewed ten students who pointed out the stresses of being a student at NC – including its demanding STEM classes – and the stress from grades and social pressures in an isolated campus community following years of coronavirus-related restrictions.
Others mentioned other concerns from being young in a seemingly broken world–politics, debt, a diminishing job market, and the widespread fear of having fewer opportunities and less success than prior generations.
“We feel like we have the weight of the world on our shoulders,” junior Ezekiel Snyder said.
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