The Dartmouth Mirror 01/09/15

1.9.2015 Grieving for suicide| 2

MIRROR There’s no place like om| 3

It’s time to talk | 4-5

Q&A: Ameer & Campbell| 8 ANNIKA PARK // THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

2// MIRROR

EDITOR’S NOTE

Grieving for Suicide For some, grief persists, affecting lives in complex ways SPOTLIGHT

Hello, Mirror readers!

Greetings from toasty Hanover. I’m Charlie Rafkin ’16, and I’m already excited to take over as editor here at The Mirror. It can be an important vehicle for driving campus conversation, and more than ever, Hanover needs a magazine that will produce thoughtful reflection on campus issues.

In conjunction with other editors, I made a considered choice to devote the entirety of this week’s magazine to mental health at the College. In almost every conversation about this topic, people emphasized that mental health demands further scrutiny — when 28 percent of Dartmouth students are seeing mental health counselors, we must finally recognize that our peers are struggling.

This week’s Mirror, however, is also a magazine about the inspiring campus leaders who have challenged the timbre of campus conversation. There’s computer science professor Andrew Campbell, who pioneered an app that could help identify depressed students. There’s Student Assembly, whose “I’m Here For You” campaign was well-received from some pockets of campus, and of course, there’s Active Minds, the mental health advocacy group whose membership has swelled in recent terms.

The campus discussion on mental health has shifted somewhat, and it’s important to take stock of successes, even as we emphasize that hard work clearly remains.

A last note: Two of the Mirror’s most popular features each week are “Overheards” and “Trending at Dartmouth.” You might think that only a dunce would mess with features so successful — but that’s exactly what we’ve decided to do in order to experiment with different features to fill that space each week. You can get your weekly fix of “Overheards” and “Trending at Dartmouth” over at Dartbeat, the paper’s daily blog.

Happy reading,

follow @thedmirror

MIRROR R MIRROR EDITOR CHARLIE RAFKIN

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF KATIE McKAY

PUBLISHER JUSTIN LEVINE

EXECUTIVE EDITORS JESSICA AVITABILE LUKE McCANN

B y ZAK meghrouni-BROWN

The Dartmouth community has endured its share of sorrow over the suicides of community members or loved ones. Just this past November the community was distressed by the suicide of a Geisel student.

Community members who have grappled with the suicides of loved ones said that grieving for suicide is a complex process.

For some, the loss affects many facets of their life, including their interactions with their communities, their close ones and their schools.

Aaron Ellis ’15, who has struggled with the suicides of three friends, none of whom were Dartmouth students, while in college, said that the experience has profoundly influenced his time at the school.

“It was such a life-changing event for me,” he said. “After that, nothing was really the same.”

Blaine Ponto ’14 was finishing her sophomore summer when a fellow Dartmouth student and close friend died by suicide. She recalled the shock she initially felt at the news of the death.

“Obviously you don’t know what to think at first, so it’s this atmosphere of mass notknowing-what-to-do, and that’s the problem with suicide in general,” she said. “Regardless of where you are, it leaves you saying, ‘Oh man, how could that happen?’”

Ponto noted that the resources available for her to lean on emotionally were comprehensive, even though she ultimately did not rely on them. After hearing the news of the death, Dick’s House made their counselors on-call to speak with students who needed help, she said.

“There was very clear support, but at the same time we were all still trying to deal with it in our own individual ways,” Ponto said.

Still, Dick’s House counseling has been found to have mixed results by other people grieving for loved ones who completed suicides. Ellis also sought counseling from Dick’s House. He said he was initially discouraged by lackluster treatment, noting that the counselors sent him elsewhere to find help outside the College.

Notably, since 2012, the College has overhauled its counseling services. Ellis has been back to Dick’s House since his freshman year and said that he has seen improvement in their services.

While reaching out to a professional can be helpful, Ponto found that these services were not sufficient for her to continue on as usual. Her friend’s death occurred close to finals, but when it came time to put pen to page or fingers to keyboard, Ponto could not

ANSWERS TO THE QUESTIONS YOU WERE TOO AFRAID TO ASK Q: Is Seasonal Affective Disorder a thing?

A: It’s not just a made-up excuse you use to justify unwarranted grumping at anyone and everyone during the months of January to March. According to an interview of SAD expert Kelly Rohan conducted by the American Psychological Association, SAD differs from the “winter blues” because SAD refers to the “regular seasonal pattern” where people display symptoms of depression during winter

focus on her work.

Despite the heightened attention and sensitivity that this sort of grief requires, after a grace period, students are expected to resume their lives according to plan — plaster on that veneer and dive back in.

“A lot of us just needed more time and were having difficulties finishing out the term because we had been really strongly impacted,” Ponto said. “But I didn’t feel like there was a lot of practical response from the College in that vein. My dean just told me it would be better if I powered through it.”

Sylvia Langford, associate vice president of student affairs for discovery and engagement at Syracuse University, was a Dartmouth dean when three students completed suicides in a short time frame in 1995. She wrote in an email that the deaths by suicide caused the community to question its own self-assuredness.

“Students rarely discussed not being star students or having challenges at home or struggling with finances or being deeply in love,” Langford wrote. “So this terrible series of events caused students to ponder what was going on for them.”

Howard Lunche, a clinical social worker and grief expert, said that because society codes grief as painful, people often try to bracket off their grief immediately. When people emphasize getting back to normal, sometimes the bereaved lose a valuable opportunity to come to terms with the death.

Ellis said that although he believes people should talk about suicide more frequently, he recognizes that discussion can render some uncomfortable.

“I think it just kind of makes it too real for a lot of people,” he said. “It’s still stigmatized to the point where people blame the person who committed suicide. They think they should have done something, and they’re at fault.”

Kristina Heggedal ’17, whose close highschool friend died by suicide, said that she now stresses discussing difficult issues like depression, anxiety and suicide. Heggedel believes we fool ourselves by tip-toeing around the topic and using more amenable vocabulary.

“Saying the actual, difficult words [is] sometimes really powerful,” she said. “You need to say them to get to talking about the more painful parts.”

With truncated academic terms and stressors both academic and social, it can be hard to make time to address grief. Nothing at Dartmouth will wait for you. Once the news settles in, what happens next?

Lunche delineated grief from depression.

Grief, he said, feels emotionally charged, while depression can feel “blue, muted, dampened.”

Q: What’s the dif ference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist?

A: This question has hounded me throughout the process of putting this issue together.

It was particularly embarrassing when I emailed psychologists asking to interview a psychiatrist. A psychologist is a scientist (who typically has a Ph.D.), while a psychiatrist is a doctor (with an M.D.).

Lunche identified grief stemming from a suicide as particularly animated. Because some perceive suicide as a choice, they may feel angry at the person who completed a suicide. Some people jolt between extremes of anger, sadness and hope, he said.

“Grief is very alive. It’s all over the place,” he said. “People can laugh pretty easily. People can talk about the person. People can be down one day [and] be more hopeful the next day.

People can be really angry.”

Still, he emphasized that grief can thoroughly interrupt daily life. Some effects include distraction, loss of sleep and turbulent emotional states.

Grieving for suicide also takes on its own particular complexity, Lunche said, because some view the death by suicide as preventable.

When describing her own grieving process after her friend’s death, Ponto echoed the complexity of grieving for suicide. Because the death was so sudden and felt seemingly preventable, she said her grieving felt almost frustrating.

Langford, who met twice a week with one of the students who completed suicide in 1995, wrote that she felt personally culpable.

“I couldn’t help but wonder if I had missed something, or if there was something that I should have done but didn’t,” wrote Langford.

“Did I miss that he wasn’t getting better — or that by getting better, he was then able to do what he had been thinking about all along?”

Ellis said he felt that an emphasis on uncovering the motivations behind a suicide, as if the action is a “puzzle” to be understood, was unproductive.

Grieving for suicide has no constants — grief shows many different faces to those afflicted. For Langford, response to deaths by suicide requires an appreciation for this variability.

“During times like these, students grieved in many different ways, and professional staff needed to be mindful that some students didn’t show their grief and some did; some students were able to focus on their studies and some students couldn’t focus at all,” Langford wrote.

“In short, the many campus responses were as diverse as the students, and there was no one way or a right way to grieve.”

Staff writer Kalie Marsicano contributed reporting.

Editor’s Note: If you or someone you love is considering suicide, there are resources available for you.

Dick’s House: (603) 646-9442 during work hours or (603) 646-4000 at other times.

National Suicide Hotline: 1 (800) 273-8255 Q: Is mental health being addressed through Moving Dartmouth Forward?

A: Moving Dartmouth Forward attempts to address three tiers — inclusivity, sexual assault, binge drinking — and does not explicitly include mental health. Also worth griping about — the petition to improve counseling services at Dick’s House is listed as “complete” on Improve Dartmouth.

Really? They’ve improved their game, sure — but it seems clear that there’s more room for

There’s No Place like Om A whirlwind tour of Hanover’s meditation scene SPOTLIGHT

MIRROR //3

THE D RUNS THE NUMBERS

B y Mary LIZA HARTONG

Notice your posture. This is the first thing the voice on my computer told me when I searched for guided meditations, found a website and purposefully picked the shortest one — a three-minute mediation called “Body and Sound.” As instructed, I noticed that I was in my typical kitchen table position, one leg tucked under me, one curled around the side of the chair, a tad bit hunched and leaning a little to the right. It was the position I had been in since

“It becomes a point of reference, a place that you can return to again and again to reflect on where you are in your life.”

- GENDO ALYNN FIELD, HEAD OF DARTMOUTH ZEN PRACTICE GROUP AND DIRECTOR OF THE UPPER VALLEY ZEN CENTER. Thanksgiving, avidly searching the Internet for presents I could give to my extended family. It was, for me, the position of the hunt.

Next, I was instructed to focus on the sounds around me. I was specifically told not to make a story in my head about the sounds, so I shelved the line of poetry I had already thought up about the washer sounding like a tiny train making its way across the country at night.

Instead, I simply listened.

After a few minutes of thinking about the sound of the washer and the hunched position of my back, I emerged from my state of meditation. Before I had started meditating as the video instructed, I hadn’t thought I was feeling tense, or had any bad feelings in general. Yet, after my completion of the exercise, there was no denying that I felt, for lack of a more descriptive word, better. I had that feeling you get when you’re on the breaking point of having a complete meltdown, and instead you just decide not to freak out. I liked it.

It got me thinking. How much happier would I feel if I nixed three minutes of Facebook time about dropping your pizza slice face down on the kitchen floor, and instead started using that time for some more peaceful contemplation. What if I replaced some of my time spent scrolling through the internet, and instead got to experience that sentiment you ooze when you’re on top of the world, that yeah-that-

guy-just-took-your-cab-but-it’s-okaybecause-you’ll-walk-home-instead and replaced it with this?

As it turns out, I’m not the only one wondering this, and a number of leaders and practitioners of mediation and relaxation techniques exist around the Upper Valley and here at Dartmouth.

As the head of the Dartmouth Zen Practice Group and director of the Upper Valley Zen Center, Gendo Allyn Field leads students in mediation, conducts seminars on campus and brings speakers to the area to discuss the techniques and benefits of practicing meditation.

Field argued that finding time to meditate is essential. No matter how your day is going, he said, people can take stock of their mental health.

“It becomes a point of reference, a place that you can return to again and again to reflect on where you are in your life,” he said.

Dick’s House psychologist Mark Hiatt agreed that incorporating mindfulness into an everyday routine can make ones obligations less burdensome.

He noted that meditation can reduce stress, particularly for students caught up in the everyday rush of life at the College.

“Students have so much going on in their lives, it’s easy to get caught up in worries about the future and in ruminating about the past,” Hiatt said. “Mindfulness is really the process of trying to stay present, to be engaged in the here and now instead of being lost in thoughts and

“For the kinds of stressors that lead to overconsumption of drugs and alcohol, the lack of sensitivity that leads to sexual assault and the states of fear and the bias and prejudice that can lead to a lack of inclusivity, mindfulness is potentially the most effective method that we know of.”

- JOHN CHRISTOPHER, GEISEL PSYCHIATRY PROFESSOR worries.”

John Christopher, a professor of psychiatry at the Geisel Medical School and a psychologist at Hanover Psychiatry, focuses on health psy-

chology and behavioral medicine, using mindfulness-based stress reduction to help people regulate

“It’s easy to get caught up in worries about the future and in ruminating about the past.

- MARK HIATT, DICK’S HOUSE PSYCHOLOGIST their autonomic nervous systems.

His eight-week group program is based on the methods Jon Kabat-Zinn, a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School who sought to link buddhist teachings with science.

Christopher’s practice incorporates MBSR, yoga and a Chinese mindfulness practice called qigong.

To Christopher, meditation could alleviate concerns raised about the tenor of social life at the College.

“For the kinds of stressors that lead to overconsumption of drugs and alcohol, the lack of sensitivity that leads to sexual assault and the states of fear and the bias and prejudice that can lead to a lack of inclusivity, mindfulness is potentially the most effective method that we know of,” said Christopher.

For Lucia Pohlman ’15, who cofounded the Dartmouth Mindfulness Club in 2011, meditation could help improve Dartmouth’s social life but only if embraced by the student body on its own.

“If the President recommends that we all meditate, that feels a little silly, no?” she said. “If the student body at Dartmouth wanted to be more conscious and awake, that would be awesome.”

Sarah Berger teaches the Meditation and Relaxation P.E. class on campus, and noted that it fills up quickly each term.

Berger also emphasized that the skills taught in her class apply to student life.

“I can’t speak for everyone who decides to attend the class, but students have told me things like it helped them feel calmer. They used some of the skills before things like job interviews and felt better going in,” Berger said. “It helped them handle their term better, and they felt more peaceful with their stresses.”

The National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine publishes a fact sheet on meditation, and the science substantiates some of these advocates’ beliefs. One trial suggests that practicing meditation may reduce high blood pressure and help practicers manage symptoms

of insomnia, anxiety and pain. However, while a review of 47 trials also suggested that meditation shows some evidence of improving anxiety or depression, the researchers noted that there was “no evidence that meditation could help stress related behaviors, such as substance abuse or sleep.”

Ben Packer ’17 came across meditation during a high school yoga

“Students have told me things like that it made them feel calmer. They used some of the skills before things like job interviews and felt better going in.

-SARAH BERGER, TEACHER MEDITATION AND RELAXATION P.E. CLASS

28

The percentage of undergraduates who reported seeing a counselor last year.

7, 2, 3, 2 The numbers of staff psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors and nutritionists, respectively, at Dick’s House

48 class and began his own practice of mindfulness. Meditation, he said, helps him control his thoughts and see the world with fresh eyes.

Sydney Walter ’18 began to meditate after witnessing the change that meditating had made in her friends’ lives.

“After doing some research, I tried it out and immediately fell in love with the peace it gave me,” Walter said. “My favorite part of meditation is how individualized it can be. Meditation can be about whatever the person needs in that moment or that week.”

Even with a cohort of campus leaders, Dartmouth remains behind schools like Brown University, which has a contemplative studies concentration, and the University of Virginia, which boasts its own Mindfulness Center. Christopher hopes that Dartmouth will focus on creating similar programs on campus.

Some courses listed under Brown’s concentration, like “Meditation and the Brain” or “Good Vibrations: The Music of Everyday Objects,” may raise eyebrows at Dartmouth’s Office of the Registrar, but can contemplation really be a source of academic scrutiny? It’s worth noting, however, the major seems surprisingly rigorous — the science track requires a statistics course, for example, and the humanities track’s “Philosophy of Mind” course could easily fit into the Dartmouth philosophy department’s interest areas.

Senior staff writer Charlie Rafkin contributed reporting.

The number of students computer science professor Andrew Campbell tracked for an entire term with his student life app. The app could measure when a student slept, chatted, moved

4 The number of Through the Looking Glass features that the Mirror published last term that discussed mental health

4-5 Between these weeks, the students whom Campbell tracked stopped going to the gym

4// MIRROR

It’s Time to Talk Has campus discussion of mental health finally come around?

STORY

B y Caroline Berens

In her Apr. 19, 2013 article exploring the stigma surrounding depression, “Depression: What Everyone’s Not Talking About,” Reese Ramponi ’13 says the “discussion of the issue remains scarce on campus.”

Yet the past year has seen a significant growth in discussions of mental health on campus — Dick’s House has tripled its counseling staff and Student Assembly launched its yearlong campaign, “I’m Here for You,” aimed at breaking the silence around mental illness. Is discussion of depression at Dartmouth still “scarce”?

Let’s begin by establishing the basics.

If discussion has swelled, it’s because mental health on campus merits scrutiny.

The American Psychological Association, citing data from the 2013 National College Health Assessment, reported that one-third of college students noted having difficulty functioning in the last 12 months due to depression. Additionally, almost 50 percent said they had experienced overwhelming anxiety.

The 2014 Dartmouth Student Health

“People sometimes think those who suffer are narcissistic, lazy or spoiled — they don’t understand that depression and anxiety are diseases, and that, like any other disease, they can become dangerous if not treated with medication or treatment.”

-ivy schweitzer, professor of english and women’s and gender studies survey, administered to a random sample of half of undergraduates, indicated that within the last 12 months, 8 percent of students have been diagnosed or treated by a professional for depression and 11 percent for anxiety. More than a quarter of students — 28 percent — said that they had sought professional help from a mental health counselor within the last year.

While mental illnesses are caused by a variety of influences, some of the factors contributing to the survey’s results are specific to Dartmouth, Dick’s House psychologist Bryant Ford explained, “Dartmouth’s shorter academic calendar can increase stress since, for example, it’s very difficult to make up work in a timely manner if you miss class,” he said. “This pressure can exacerbate preexisting issues.”

Computer science professor Andrew Campbell, who helped start an app that tracks student mental health, agrees.

“As a faculty member I’ve witnessed the high levels of anxiety during the term and I wonder, is this the best way to teach our students?” he said.

With a sample of 48 students, the app uses data from the students’ phones over a term to assess trends in their overall mental health, academic performance and behaviors. According to results published online, the study demonstrated the students’ stress growing quickly as the term began, plateauing at about 28 days into the term. The buildup of stress comes as no surprise to anyone who has weathered a term in Hanover.

Students in the sample stopped exercising frequently after the fourth week of term, and engaged in brief, “businesslike” conversations around midterm time, the study reported. In the final days of the term, conversation behaviors began to rebound as students started having longer, more frequent conversations.

The D-plan, however, isn’t the only contributing factor to fluctuating levels of mental health. Hayley Son ’15 is copresident of Active Minds, a mental health advocacy student organization. An international student originally from South Korea, Son decided to join Active Minds due to her own struggles with mental health stemming from the difficulty of adjusting to life at Dartmouth.

“I definitely struggled at first. It’s so hard to feel comfortable and at home somewhere when you have to adjust to so many things at once — it’s all so different and foreign,” she said. “A lot of international students who have never lived abroad go through the same thing, to varying degrees of severity.”

She said her own involvement in Active Minds has made her more comfortable seeking out help.

Student body president Casey Dennis ’15 and vice president Frank Cunningham ’16, who began “I’m Here For You,” both acknowledge that Dartmouth’s fast-paced academic calendar can contribute to its “pressure cooker” environment, which puts an enormous strain on students, especially during finals.

If roughly one in 10 Dartmouth students has a diagnosed mental health problem — and that doesn’t even include those who don’t seek help — and one in four sees a psychologist, this issue still receives far too little attention. What causes mental health to have a stigma at all?

English and women’s and gender studies professor Ivy Schweitzer explained that the stigma associated with mental health arises from misunderstanding.

“Mental health issues are often seen as a failure of moral will,” she said. “People sometimes think those who suffer are narcissistic, lazy or spoiled — they don’t

understand that depression and anxiety are diseases, and that, like any other disease, they can become dangerous if not treated with medication or treatment.”

Schweitzer said students’ overwhelming fear of failure — what she called “the big f-word at Dartmouth” — might also prompt students to conceal their feelings to avoid

“Recognizing depression for what it is and not something that should be hidden — not talked openly about — brushed under the rug or feared is a great way to start destigmatizing depression at Dartmouth.”

-Andrew Campbell, professor of computer science weakness.

Fortunately, some groups have devoted themselves to discussing these issues, hoping to ease campus comfort in admitting that people are struggling.

For Ford, the Dick’s House psychologist, that’s the right approach to ending mental health’s stigma.

“The best way to continue destigmatizing depression is to talk about it,” he said.

“Hiding, ignoring or minimizing it will never make it go away.”

Son said that Active Minds membership nearly doubled during last spring and this fall. She said the group has tried to become more noticeable through an increased number of events.

She noted the increase in the Dick’s House staff — counseling now boasts 12 staff psychologists, counselors and psychiatrists and a handful of residents and interns. Still, if one in four Dartmouth undergraduates see counseling, that means these counselors are intended to serve 1,000 students. While many students may opt for outside resources, it’s fair to wonder whether a staff of about 20 is sufficient.

Campbell, who became interested in mental health due to his experiences growing up with a younger brother who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, is just one example of a faculty member who has demonstrated concern about Dartmouth students’ mental health.

“Recognizing depression for what it is and not something that should be hidden — not talked openly about — brushed under the rug or feared, is a great start to destigmatizing depression at Dartmouth,” he said.

Students involved in Active Minds are

not the only ones who have been exposed to support for mental health. This past fall, a banner displayed in Berry featured pledges from community members to show support. A Collis event during the fall featured Dick’s House staff, so they could speak with students in a casual setting.

Although Active Minds was involved with planning and executing these events, many were spearheaded by Student Assembly.

One “I’m Here For You” campaign event involved a story-sharing discussion during the fall where seven students, including Cunningham, shared their personal experiences with depression. With approximately 300 people in attendance, Dennis and Cunningham consider it a success.

Cunningham explained that since he’s shared his story, his “friends and classmates often send [him] emails asking to get coffee, checking in to make sure [he’s] doing okay.” Several people approached Student Assembly after the talk and asked how they could become involved in the campaign.

Son agreed that the campaign saw success, noting that the Dartmouth Hall auditorium was packed with students, but she said Student Assembly should increase the campaign’s reach.

“I had the feeling that a lot of students who came to the event were friends with Frank, Casey or other Student Assembly members and the panelists,” she said.

“Although that’s the inevitable nature of these events, I think that there are quite a few students who don’t know what ‘I’m Here For You’ is all about or even that Student Assembly is doing a campaign on mental health.”

Five of six students interviewed did not know about the campaign. The sixth student who did is a member of Student Assembly.

Right before finals began, Student Assembly also orchestrated a Relaxation Fest, which featured yoga and meditation sessions, nutrition booths and therapy dogs.

Dennis and Cunningham said that although campus discussions about mental health have increased in the past fall, more work remains. After all, Cunningham noted, “Suicide is one of the top five killers of college-age students.”

So the real question remains — have things changed? Professor Schweitzer, who has worked at Dartmouth for 21 years, believes they have. In the 1980s, she said, the US witnessed a “nationwide silence” about mental health. While students still suffered, they never discussed seeking treatment, she said.

“Obviously, things are very different than when I first began teaching here,” she said. “But I have seen several changes in the public discussion of mental health at Dartmouth even in the past one or two years. And it’s nearly all student-run.”

MIRROR //5

Annika Park // THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

6// MIRROR

Through the Looking Glass My Father’s Illness COLUMN

BY Lauren Harris

My father passed away the summer before my sophomore year. That’s how I always start the explanation, and that’s often how I end it. When people ask about my father, they don’t expect a tragic story as a response, and I truly do not wish to present them with one.

Death is already painful and complicated. Loss of a parent is immensely difficult — the story is already sad, regardless of the circumstances.

One of the main reasons that I tend to avoid talking about my father’s death is that the words themselves are so melodramatic — “My dad committed suicide.” The phrasing makes it sound like a crime and an illness wrapped up in one. There are so many inherent associations with those words that it becomes nearly impossible to conceptualize the phrase as anything that could possibly have happened in my life. Confronting the reality of my father’s suicide has always reminded me of the visceral feeling I had at a funeral when I was younger upon seeing a corpse in a coffin for the first time. It is so grotesque that it seems as though it must be fake. I am seized with an intense desire to escape that mental space.

I was in middle school when I first realized that my father struggled with depression. I don’t remember how it came up exactly, but I recall my mom gently explaining to me that dad’s depression didn’t have anything to do with me or our family’s situation, and that he was seeing a psychiatrist for treatment. I never talked to my dad about it personally — our relationship wasn’t like that. He was quiet, intellectual and introverted — not overly affectionate or gregarious. But we were close and had a lot in common.

We shared intellectual discussions rather than emotional ones. He had a dry sense of humor and sharp wit that I inherited, and his mental capacity for factual knowledge was enviable and immensely impressive. He knew so much. Sometimes we would go for walks in a nearby park, and he would teach me the correct names for all the birds we saw. Once he explained to me, on our daily drive to my middle school, how vehicle traffic followed many of the laws of fluid dynamics. On the rare occasions that I was going to leave home for more than a few days, he would embrace me, and we would exchange “I love yous.” But as far as I can recall, we rarely verbally shared our feelings in a substantial way. I don’t think it bothered either of us.

I didn’t think about my dad’s depression much until I got older. Many of his symptoms could be attributed to an introverted personality, so his behavior didn’t seem remarkable. But I slowly began to understand that the extent to which he required time alone, as well as the occasional intensity of his negative emotions, was not necessarily typical.

In hindsight, his depression must

have worsened gradually, but it never seemed as though it was overtaking his existence. Though I sensed the distance that separated him from myself and everyone else, I never even skimmed the surface of what may have been an overwhelming and increasing feeling of despair . It’s still difficult for me to understand, because my dad never outwardly or explicitly expressed any sadness to me. There was so much he enjoyed doing — talking long walks on the boardwalk, caring for our cats, cooking dinner and driving me from piano lessons to ballet to horseback riding lessons without ever complaining.

When I left for my first year at Dartmouth, I rarely kept in touch with dad. That was normal for us. We spoke on the phone about once a week, and we emailed back and forth. He would send me links to blues music videos on YouTube, and I would update him with the day-to-day craziness of freshman year: my atrocious grades in Math 11, my deteriorating sleep schedule and getting to know my roommate. He seemed, for lack of a better word, okay.

I wasn’t thinking about his depression — after all, I usually didn’t.

When I came home for the summer and started spending time with him again, I sensed that something was different. Though my parents and I were living in the same house, I sometimes felt as if the three of us were leading separate lives. Dad spent most of his time alone, taking walks or listening to music, and he was emotionally even more distant than usual. He got angry about seemingly trivial things — a malfunctioning stove, a stain on the carpet.

I didn’t understand what was going on with him or what might have changed that was affecting his psychological well-being so intensely, but I suspected that he had begun using alcohol as a coping mechanism. The realization of this possibility shook me.

It was an immensely difficult few months for my parents and me. As the summer was ending, I finally mustered up the courage to try talking to my dad about what he was going through. I told him that I knew that he had struggled with depression in the past and asked him if he would consider seeing a therapist again. He resisted, noting that his previous experience seeking out treatment felt ineffective and that no one had ever been able to really help him. I expressed my love for him and retreated, deciding that he knew what was best for himself.

Fast-forward a few weeks, and dad is checked into an intensive psychological care unit for one week following an emotional breakdown, which must have been brewing since at least the beginning of the summer. Instead of coming home afterward, he tells me that he is planning on going on “a long vacation.” Maybe to Florida. He’s not sure yet. He avoids eye contact and

gives me a hug. I tell him I love him and ask him to stay in touch. I watch him drive away. That night, he attempts to end his life.

When the policeman knocked that night, I was already in bed. I thought it was dad trying to get in. The officer informed us that dad had tried to kill himself, that he had been found and that he was now in a nearby hospital in critical condition. A note for each of us was found.

The following week was a blur of hospital rooms. Though my dad had attempted an overdose, it had not resulted in his death. I tried to wrap my mind around the fact that dad had wanted to die. At the same time, I understood that this drive was the result of his depression. So maybe he wouldn’t have wanted all these doctors to try to save him. I didn’t know. There was no way I could know.

After about five days in the hospital, and the day before I was supposed to head back to Dartmouth for sophomore fall, my dad regained consciousness. We suspected enormous brain damage, but somehow — although he wasn’t totally himself — he seemed to be getting better. It was unbelievable. It was, maybe, a miracle. He smiled, took my hand and told my mom and me that he loved us and that he was sorry if he had “screwed anything up.” We told him we loved him, that everything was okay and that we were so happy he would be coming back home. I promised to keep in touch once I had moved in. The next day, he went into cardiac arrest. He passed away shortly thereafter. *** Because of my own profound difficulty with discussing the situation, I rarely divulge any information about my father’s death that I deem “unnecessary.” Until now, I have only shared the full story with mental health professionals and a few close friends. Occasionally I am presented with a specific question pertaining to the circumstances, but when this happens, I tend to mumble something about how he was “dealing with a lot of health issues” and “got bad really quickly.”

I’m still not sure how to feel about all this. On one hand, I realize that no one is ever prepared, when they ask me about my dad, for my response to include suicide. I do not wish to burden someone with any sense of obligation to discuss the circumstances further, but I am conflicted by my own personal conviction that mental health’s stigma in our culture prevents those who truly need help from seeking it out.

We need to consider depression and suicide as valid topics of discussion, not sources of shame or secrecy. I share the experience of my father’s suicide not simply to discuss what I went though on a personal level, but rather with a desire to increase the openness of our discourse on mental health.

Grieving for my dad was challenging and painful. Though I was surrounded by an immensely supportive

Courtesy of Lauren Harris

Lauren Harris ’16 writes about grappling with her father’s death by suicide. group of friends, I rarely discussed the depth of what I was dealing with internally. I’ve always been rather emotionally independent, and to be honest I wasn’t sure that talking about it with my friends would do any good.

That’s not to say that I am not eternally grateful for their support. I could not have made it through that fall without them.

It’s also possible that I was repressing a lot of what I was feeling.

I started seeing a therapist at Dick’s House when I realized that I’d been ignoring the symptoms of what were likely panic attacks. She suggested that I plan a memorial service in dad’s honor to help make my grieving more productive, and I found the process to be very healing. But the sadness still came in waves, knocking me down at a moment’s notice when something reminded me of him. I stuttered when I accidentally talked about dad in the present tense. Mom and I spoke on the phone often.

In some ways, understanding the intensity of my father’s mental anguish helps lessen the blow of his death. He was a truly wonderful father, with a sharp mind and a deeply good soul, and he also had been struggling with an intense sadness for most of his adult life. These aspects of his being coexisted. I try to find solace in the fact that, in the final moments I shared with him, he seemed to find clarity.

His final words to my mother and me conveyed the deep and true love that he had always felt for us. It seemed as though he had achieved a state of grace. His suffering has ended.

Of course, this is not how I feel it should have ended. I’m not sure what would have happened if he had ever placed a stronger interest in attempting to improve his psychological well-being, either with more intensive medication or new modes of therapy.

But I don’t think he ever would have taken either of those routes by choice, as I am fairly certain that he did not actually believe that he was depressed — there was an enormous amount of denial at play. Still, I wish I could have convinced him to try, and I continue to grapple with my inability to reach out to him in that way.

Taken at face value, suicide is a choice. But it is also a result of depression, which is not a choice — it is an illness. And one of its most troubling symptoms is a lessened ability to think in a way that would be considered

rational. When someone believes, on a fundamental level, that their life is not worth living, suicide may present itself as an option — and a depressed person may find this conclusion to be singular and inescapable. I refuse to the blame the victim of mental illness for attempting or committing suicide. In the future, I hope that we place more emphasis on encouraging people to seek out guidance to better understand their own psychological well-being, for mental illness’s stigma leads many to refuse to seek out treatment. Only by understanding mental illness for what it is — an illness — can we begin to approach understanding and healing.

I have read many articles that put forward the claim that suicide is selfish.

My dad did not choose to end his life because it was the easiest way out for him. He devoted so much of his life to caring for my mother and me that it would be impossible for me to view his death as a premeditated act of desertion. There is a difference between selfishness and hopelessness, and my dad’s death was a result of despair following an intense psychological breakdown. I truly believe that his depression caused him to feel that ending his own life was the least obtrusive way to exit. It is with this in mind that I am able to move forward.

I am not sure that I will ever be able to completely make peace with my father’s death. Though I am usually able to view his depression somewhat clinically through the lens of psychology, I do not wish to give the false impression that I have completely come to terms with what transpired. I continue to grapple with guilt, and I wonder if I could have done anything differently during his life to prevent such a tragic outcome. Another source of guilt is that, despite what has happened, I am pretty much doing okay.

Of course, I think about dad all the time, and I miss him. Some days are worse than others. The only thing to do now is to focus on the positives — all of his contributions to our family, the essential goodness of his being and my memories of our time together.

Editor’s Note: If you or someone you love is considering suicide, there are resources available for you.

Dick’s House: (603) 646-9442 during work hours or (603) 646-4000 at other times.

National Suicide Hotline: 1 (800) 273-8255

MIRROR //7

Boots and RallIES

FrIDAYS WITH MARIAN COLUMN By Marian Lurio

COLUMN

By Aaron Pellowski As a veteran whiner, I’ve found it useful over the years to get deep inside the object of my complaints. With due diligence, I research information that permits me to locate the tenderest zone of the person or institution I want to lambast, and there lay the jackhammer tip of my pen. Slurs and lies just don’t wound the way facts do.

Yet there are some things that boggle me so severely that I doubt I will ever understand them well enough to render a truly rigorous and systematic critique. One example is found in those who are somehow still ignorant that Winnie the Pooh is supposed to be the ghost of Christopher Robin’s dead infant brother. If it isn’t blazingly clear from the text, the internet should have filled them in at some point.

Another example — the people who come into One Wheelock and the Top of the Hop and begin playing the pianos. What is with you lot? You just walked into an entirely silent room of studying students and concluded that what these folks need most right now is your divine musical talent, and you, the 21st Century Orpheus that you are, could not settle for any of the sound-proof practice rooms available to students downstairs? You really thought it utterly chill of you to penetrate my tranquility with your dreamy blandscape personal composition?

Oh, and you’re going to sing along, too?

Good Christ. Either you have some truly Jurassic cojones, or you are just bizarrely clueless and selfish. I can only suppose your mother either never hugged you as a child, or hugged you far too much.

Another thing I don’t understand at all is cheating. The recent coverage of the so-called “Clickergate” has piqued my befuddlement in a few ways. Item one: our apparently helpless commitment to affix ‘-gate’ to the name of every last scandal. Nausea wells in me as I contemplate an incoming generation unfamilar with the historical origin of this awful bit of linguistics. Item two: Last November, The Dartmouth published its comparative report of the cheating scandal at Chapel Hill. In an ironic quirk, one professor trotted out his course as a good-faith example of an attempt to accommodate athletes struggling with overcommitment. Which professor?

Just Randall Palmer, the religion professor who taught “Sports, Ethics and Religion.” The episode came into the public’s eye a week later: Palmer’s students are the very ones who are the alleged perpetrators of Clickergate. Though our scandal hardly compares with the gargantuan “shadowcurriculum” affair at UNC, the tone of the article’s interviewees is overwhelmingly suggestive of a holier-than-they, can’t-happen-here attitude — an attitude that I expect was somewhat damaged a few days later.

I, too, would have dismissed rumors of a “culture of cheating” as a myth, mostly because I don’t understand cheating at all. While I wipe the crow-feathers from my jowls, however, I still feel great confusion over the matter. Now to be fair, as a mere exercise of the mind, I regularly think about how I could cheat on a multitude of assignments, just as I frequently indulge myself in contemplating the means to a perfect murder, as many others do. But why someone would ever actually cheat beats me to smithereens.

Because, for me, taking a class is about feeling smart. I try really hard in difficult classes because if I do well, it will make me feel smart.

I’m more lackadaisical about easy courses since doing well or poorly there doesn’t really indicate much. My transcript reflects this attitude. Until I was brutalized by a class on the reconstructive

linguistics of ancient Greek, my lowest grade had come in Italian 02 my freshman winter, which was by all means a cheesecake course. That same term I had taken an intensive five-person seminar on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. In order to feel smart, I dumped almost every hour of my free time into preparing for the class. I did substantially better in a course untangling a tome of overblown German obscurantism than I did in an introductory course on the Italian language.

But no one can feel smart by cheating. Scanning a transcript of nothing but flat As could make one feel successful, but if these grades were obtained fraudulently, one could hardly say he or she felt smart. It’s not dishonesty or disrespect for a professor that concerns me here, since I concede the possibility that there are some professors whose conduct disqualifies them of the respect of their students. It’s about priorities.

Still, I am concerned with the discussion about the culprits, many of whom are athletes. I also wonder whether their status as athletes alters the ethics of the matter at all. While I do not want to apologize for or appear to endorse cheating, I do think that an athlete who cheats has to be judged differently from a NARP. I have always held great suspicion and distaste for students who speak pejoratively against the intelligence of athletes and, by extension, the legitimacy of their place at Dartmouth. Our athletes, though they are not the best in the country, are still miles above the median. They also have much more work to do, in the form of games, travel, practice, lift, etc. I am very careful about my use of the word “elitist,” since I feel that it is often a term hastily applied to winners by losers. But I can’t help but detect an elitist vibe in conversations in which Dartmouth’s status as an academic institution is given such unjustified priority over its status as an athletic institution — thus eliciting a lot of sneering remarks against classmates who have unbelievably higher amounts of commitments and expectations.

Unlike me, athletes are not enrolled at Dartmouth exclusively to satisfy two goals — namely, to feel smart and to feel academically successful.

They also have a third goal — they hope to feel strong or fast or precise or whatever attribute relevant to the sport they play. Even an extremely talented individual may have difficulty handling all three. Focusing on two of these goals, while doing what one feels is one’s only option in order merely to survive, not excel, in the third strikes me as a little less morally repugnant. Anyone who cheats in order to look or feel successful or smart is a criminal unto society and themselves. But cheating for other reasons, while not forgivable, can’t be considered quite so vicious.

Bigger questions should be asked. Is it just or fair that Dartmouth subjects some of its students to additional burdens without sufficient compensatory accommodation? Is it emblematic of a good and healthy culture that we tolerate these burdens and even perpetuate them through unquestioned negative stereotypes of athletes? I think no, but as I stated up front, I don’t really understand the issue perfectly. There’s a good chance I’m just laying the groundwork for a secondary argument that students should be allowed to major in pong.

According to the Gregorian calendar, 2015 is underway.

I must admit I have mixed feelings about what this year will bring for the human race.

It may be a new year, but the human race is none the wiser. It’s only the 9th day of the year, and not too much has happened at Dartmouth, but Kim Jong Un’s birthday was yesterday, so that’s a start.

I’ll indulge myself in philosophizing about the fate of the entire world’s population. And presumably, like the great philosophers of ages past, I could ponder this question until the apocalypse and still not have gotten anywhere (until I realized we were doomed because it was the apocalypse — but maybe I would survive so I just don’t know how I feel about that either).

I use the word “presumably” because I have never formally — or informally — studied philosophy.

But if I had to sum up my philosophy in a nutshell, I’d say this much. I think there’s a lot we can learn about humanity, as well as the human condition, from any and all events related to reality television.

RHONJ, known to most as Real Housewives of New Jersey, star and Jersey icon Teresa Giudice has begun her prison sentence. Despite being bankrupt (or something like that — I don’t know anything about financial statements or the IRS), her family manages to summer at the same Jersey Shore spot that I have visited every summer since I was a mere two-weekold. Not only did Teresa and former housewife Jacqueline Laurita rent a house together there — there being Long Beach Island, N.J. — but it was right behind my aunt/uncle/cousins’ beach house.

While I wasn’t as lucky as my two cousins to meet any castmates in the flesh — something I have secretly held against my relatives for the past five-and-a-half years — my father and I once hid behind the other Lurio family’s fence in an attempt to become Peeping Toms.

Unfortunately, there were no spottings. I did, however, recognize Jacqueline’s son Nicholas’ Italia hat, which he had even though he was an infant and which was featured in Jacqueline’s montage during the opening credits of the show, on the dashboard of a black Escalade parked in the house’s driveway. As for Teresa, I did drive past her oldest daughter Gia this summer as she walked the Jersey streets.

Moving on to other reality TV, 2015 will see the release of the important anthropological/ sociological work, “My Husband’s Not Gay.” Thanks, TLC! According to the channel’s website, the show “follows four men living in Salt Lake City, Utah, who don’t identify themselves as homosexual despite having an attraction to men.” Lest we forget, this is the same network that has always given viewers what they were looking for. The network’s

repertoire of hit shows includes “Sister Wives,” “My Five Wives,” “19 Kids and Counting,” “Buying Naked” and “My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding.”

As if that wasn’t enough, let’s discuss some exciting developments as we approach the 2016 presidential election campaign trails. Exciting yet predictable news — Santorum is strongly considering another presidential campaign.

This presidential hopeful isn’t letting his failed 2012 bid stop him from reaching for the stars again in 2016.

Let me put a little side note here. I own the exact same flannel (okay, I will admit that the pockets are a little different) that his son — the tallest Santorum family member — sports in the family’s 2014 Christmas card. Speaking of lumberjack attire, if you are really looking to take your flannel game to the next level, look no further than Vermont Flannel Company’s diverse array of flannel thongs. It is long past time for The Dartmouth to run an exposé on what Vermont Flannels bills as “Vermont’s Secret”: these flannel thongs, called vongs, would make a “great wedding gift” according to VF. Be sure to take a short trip to their Woodstock location or browse their online collection. Let me be 100 percent clear: While I can’t provide a personal testimony/recommendation, I can confirm that the brand really does sell flannel thongs.

Anyway, while I’m sure a strong contingency of evangelicals are undoubtedly #ReadyForRick, it seems that Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor and star of his eponymous Fox show, “Huckabee,” is competing for this same group — which, for a Yankee like myself, is a shockingly large portion of the country’s population. Huckabee has excused himself from cable television in hopes that he will find even more success among voters than he did in his 2008 presidential election campaign. I’m not even being satirical there. He actually got lots and lots of votes from the evangelical base of voters. But there’s a lot of other “politicians” (a loose word these days in the Republican party) targeting this group and promoting family values.

I’m actually really upset about this development since “Huckabee” really was an entertaining show. What’s better than seeing the Fox News staff’s band, The Little Rockers, at the end of every show? I would imagine only a live broadcast of Huckabee on the electric bass with his rock band, Capitol Offense. Yes, he is really in a rock band. Goodbye for now, Mike. While I’ll miss you on my television every Saturday night, I can’t wait to see what you have up your sleeve for the campaign trail.

Next week on Serial (but actually I mean this column), it’s time to discuss the podcast that’s captured the hearts of millions. At least I’m guessing my readers number in the millions.

8// MIRROR

Q&A: Dean of the College Inge-Lise Ameer and computer science professor Andrew Campbell story

B y Charlie rafkin ||| These interviews have been edited and condensed

Dean Inge-Lise Ameer

Interim Dean of the College Inge-Lise Ameer is responsible for overseeing all aspects of student life — including mental health. In an interview in her Parkhurst Office, she discussed the D-plan, Dick’s House and medical leave.

If you look at the numbers, it is striking. A survey indicates that 28 percent of students seek counseling. Why is this not one of the single most important initiatives from the Dean of the College?

ILA: Oh, it is. This is why, two to three years ago, we added counseling positions, because the wait was totally unacceptable. I feel like the wait is much better now. We have a counselor on-call 24/7. For me, it’s one of the most important things that comes out of the Dean of the College area — is making sure that the area is fully staffed and supportive [of] students and also representing diverse perspectives.

I think that there’s definitely a sense that counseling has stepped up the game, but there’s also a sense that there’s still a lot of work to be done. On Improve Dartmouth this issue is listed as completed. Are there plans in place to make Dick’s House the best counseling services in the Ivy League?

Katelyn Jones/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

Professor Andrew Campbell developed an application that tracked student behavior.

Professor Andrew Campbell

ILA: I think we have one of the best counseling services. We’re always assessing.

In the student deaths we’ve faced, the counselors have been right there ready to support students.

Computer science professor Andrew Campbell developed the StudentLife app, which tracks students’ mental health, academic performance and behavioral trends. In the spring of 2013, Campbell used the app to measure the ups and downs of 48 of his computer science students’ terms.

So you think that common student perception about Dick’s House counseling is a hold-over?

What were the most surprising results?

ILA: I’ll tell you, it’s really frustrating for me, because we’ve invested a tremendous amount of resources. We’ve got another psychologist. I just think it’s the lore a little bit.

AC: Wow. Conversation, sleep, location, movement around campus outdoors/indoors: We have this deluge of data. We found correlations with different things — for example, mental health. The interesting breakthrough that we made was that the phone actually did this. We found that students in this group who slept less were more likely to be depressed.

It seems like a very mysterious process how medical leave happens. I was wondering if you could explicate the process by which a student struggling with mental health could be placed on medical leave.

ILA: There are different entry points — it could be your dean, your [Office of Pluralism and Leadership] advisor, your faculty member [or] your [undergraduate adviser]. If somebody has indicated to us that you are in crisis, we’re going to try to help you here first through counseling at Dick’s House. In conversation with the student and sometimes their families, [they] will say, “You know what, these issues are huge. You need to deal with them full time.”

So can Dick’s House move without parental or student consent?

ILA: That almost never happens. I can’t think of one that I’ve experienced. Can we legally remove [a] student? We would if there were safety issues — harm to oneself or others. That’s the bar that would have to be met. Let me just tell you — the majority of medical leaves are initiated by students in consultation with Dick’s House. We don’t want to be in the business of saying, “You’ve got to go.”

Let me ask the converse. If Dick’s House doesn’t think that medical leave is necessary, but an outside psychologist or psychiatrist does, would the College have the authority to provide a student with medical leave?

ILA: All of those things happen in consultation with Dick’s House. Let’s say you as a student have a doctor off-campus. That doctor thinks this is too much.

They’ll work with the student and Dick’s house. We work with a lot of doctors who are off-campus.

There might be some students who don’t like working with those professionals, which is their prerogative. But it seems like if they wanted to obtain medical leave, they’d still have to negotiate Dick’s House.

ILA: I don’t think it’s a very difficult negotiation. If a health professional is telling us that someone needs time off, then we respect that.

I wanted to ask about confidentiality. I think that renders some students wary, because there is this link between Parkhurst and Dick’s House.

ILA: Dick’s House would not release any of that unless there was a waiver signed. Unless: harm to themselves or others. But that bar is extremely high.

So I’ve seen the website, and I notice there’s a number of intuitive results. Stress starts to plateau around week five. People stop exercising around week four.

AC: They stop going to the gym, that’s right. There’s some subtle things. Some people go to bed before 12, but most people go to bed between 12 and three. And we’ve got some vampires down here who go to bed at four, five, six. These are strong correlations, and they’re significant.

The less sleep you got, the more likely you’re depressed. The fewer face-to-face conversations you’ve had during the day was the strongest indicator of depression.

I’d say that qualifies as a surprising insight.

AC: Kids who are depressed are more likely to retreat into themselves. But on the flip side of things, we also looked at loneliness, and we found that conversation frequency had no correlation with loneliness.

When I talked to a psychologist, he said, “Yeah, that’s right.” As laypeople, we feel that somebody who is social wouldn’t be lonely. But it’s not

the case. Here’s another result. We found that students who had longer conversations and more frequent conversations did better in their exams. Causality? No clue.

Let me shift tack a little bit and ask more generally about your interest in this as a hard scientist. I think that, fairly or unfairly, hard science professors get a worse rap than professors in the humanities for their level of interest in student life. Do you think that reputation is deserved?

AC: I don’t think it is actually. I think we’re all, to some degree, motivated by personal experience. My brother, many years ago — because I’m an old fart now — had his first depressive episode, and he dropped out.

He went back to a different college and got a degree in computer science. Could the [app], perhaps, have allowed my brother to live a less disruptive life? Do hard scientists get a bad rap when humanities professors may be more connected with student life? Our department chair Tom Corman cares more about students than anyone.

Is Dartmouth doing enough to support its students?

AC: I don’t think so. That’s not to say that they’re trying to explicitly undermine people’s health. They clearly care about it. It’s part of the mission.

But I would argue that we don’t really have a handle on what’s going on in our campus. There’s wonderful people over at Dick’s House, both on the clinical side and on the counseling side, who absolutely care about the student body. But because of stigma and because walking across campus is a huge struggle for some students, it doesn’t matter if the services are there. There’s a number of stakeholders. They lack the complete information to move things forward.

And I honestly think that technology could fill that gap. I’m convinced it could.