On Tuesday, Jan. 15 at about 4 p.m., I was sitting down to an early dinner with my 21-year-old grandson, a junior in the engineering program at Washington State University in Pullman. He had driven down for the day for an appointment with a Spokane neurology clinic—one solution to problems with access to mental health care on or near campus.

At the same time we were ordering dinner near downtown Spokane that afternoon, officers from the Pullman Police Department were responding to a welfare check request on Tyler Hilinski, a WSU football player who had not shown up for practice earlier in the day. When officers couldn’t locate him at the address they were given, they were redirected to Aspen Village Apartments, according to the Pullman Police Dept.

Two of Hilinski’s teammates also were looking for him at the time. They forced their way into his apartment when they didn’t receive an answer at the door. When officers arrived on the scene minutes later, they discovered 21-year-old Hilinski deceased in the apartment.

Three days later the Whitman County Coroner issued a release indicating that Hilinski’s cause of death was a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. The manner of death was suicide.

As I lay awake that Tuesday night at 3 a.m.—not sleeping because of a bad chest cold—I went online to check whether the Spokesman Review had posted a story I’d written that was due to be published on Wednesday. I discovered instead, to my dismay, the story about Hilinski.

In a sadly ironic twist, my story was a piece on the stigma of mental illness.

Needless to say, I didn’t get back to sleep after reading about another suicide that took the life of a young man who seemingly had everything to live for.

The next morning Hilinski’s story ran on the front page of the Spokesman Review. My story about the stigma of mental illness ran on the cover of the Northwest section of the newspaper.

Stunned and devastated, I expressed my deepening sorrow and empathy for Hilinski’s family and friends on my Facebook page, as well as on a group page populated by parents and family of WSU students.

Not taking anything away from the Hiliniski tragedy, the fact that this young man was a star football player is the only reason the horrifying news of his suicide went viral, and seemed to hit a nerve in communities across the country.

I have questions.

What about the other students who don’t command a national audience by virtue of their participation in sports?

According to National Data on Campus Suicide and Depression, one out of every 12 college students makes a suicide plan, and 7.5 students per 100,000 kill themselves.

Consider these statistics: 

There are more than 1,000 suicides on college campuses each year. That’s 2-3 deaths by suicide every day. But those numbers are just estimates since there is no national repository for collection of suicide statistics on college campuses.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among college-age students.

More than half of college students have had suicidal thoughts, and 1 in 10 students seriously consider attempting suicide.

Most importantly, experts say 80 to 90 percent of college students who die by suicide were not receiving help from college counseling centers.

National studies have found that suicide rates are on the rise in the U.S., reaching 13 per 100,000 among all Americans and 12.5 among those ages 15 to 24, according to the CDC.

Further, most of the largest public universities in the United States do not track suicides among their students, despite making investments in prevention at a time of surging demand for mental health services, according to a recent study by the Associated Press.

According to the AP study, 100 of the largest U.S. public universities were asked for annual suicide statistics. The study found that only 46 currently track suicides, including 27 that have consistently done so since 2007. Of the 54 remaining schools, 43 said they don’t track suicides, nine could provide only limited data and didn’t answer questions about how consistently they tracked suicides, and two didn’t provide statistics.

WSU was reportedly one of the universities that provided limited data, but that data did not include numbers of suicide according to Phil Weiler, WSU vice president of communications. Weiler says there was one completed suicide that occured on the Pullman campus for current enrolled students over the course of the past year, and one suicide as of January 25 of this year.

Tabulating student suicides comes with its own set of challenges and problems. But without that data, prevention advocates say, schools have no way to measure their success and can overlook trends that could offer insight to help them save lives.

So how is it that someone who seemed to have everything going his way could die by suicide?

Experts say the answer to “why” in many suicides is unknown, even if the deceased leaves a note.

In Hilinski’s case, WSU coach Mike Leach attempted to answer the question in a local story, saying he saw no real signs of depression in his star player and adding that Hilinski didn’t have periods of “moping around.”

One Spokane Mother’s Response

Lerria Schuh, a Spokane mother who is still recovering from a head injury she sustained more than four years ago, was infuriated by Leach’s comments.

Schuh says just because Tyler Hilinski was a WSU football quarterback, who seemingly had everything to live for, doesn’t mean that he didn’t experience depression and/or anxiety or another mental illness that was unknown to those around him.

“Coach Leach meant well, and no doubt has the best interest of all of his players at heart,” Schuh says. “That is part of what makes his statements so maddening. Not against him personally, rather against the fact that this type of naivety exists. More specifically, that a head coach of a sport that is rampant with head injury, of which depression is a hallmark symptom, even years post injury, has no real concept of the warning signs.

“I don’t know if Tyler ever sustained a head injury, but I do know his action of taking his own life meant he was in a place of the deepest despair,” she says. “Our kids have no hope if the coaches who lead them, who spend more time with them than family and friends, don’t have more extensive knowledge of the signs to look for.”

Schuh, who has herself struggled with depression resulting from a head injury, maintains that depression can look sad, ugly and dark. However, she says, an even more frightening form of depression wears a smile while burdening the shoulders of the extremely successful.

“Depression attacks the minds of individuals who are brilliant and those who have the tenacious drive to be champions. It is exactly that drive that can easily develop the mastery of deception and hide the misery being walked through daily,” says Schuh.

“Don’t be naive. There are always symptoms present. ALWAYS. They may only appear to those closest to the individual, making the burden of recognition of a disease that kills, immensely important,” she says.

I also have questions regarding the state of college students’ mental health care.

A survey of college counseling centers found that more than half of their clients have severe psychological problems, an increase of 13 percent in just two years. Anxiety and depression, in that order, are now the most common mental health diagnoses among college students, according to the Center for Collegiate Mental Health at Penn State University.

The 2016 (CCMH) annual report—one of the largest and most comprehensive reports on college students seeking mental health treatment to date—also reported that counseling centers are evaluating and managing increasing numbers of students who may also represent “threat-to-self.”

Health Care Access
The question then becomes one of access to mental health care. An unofficial and nonscientific social media survey, as well as knowledge of my grandson’s issues with access over the past 2.5 years, indicate that some students have had issues getting help with mental illness at WSU.

One WSU student in particular, Maddy Lucas, shared very real concerns about mental health care at WSU on her Facebook page recently.

“It’s tragic to lose another individual from mental illness. My heart aches and it hits too close to home. But instead of throwing around phrases like ‘I wish he would have gotten help,’” let’s talk about this:

– WSU Counseling and Psychological Services drops you from treatment at the end of each semester. It doesn’t matter at what point in the semester you began treatment either. You then have to begin the process completely over again and cross your fingers that you’re picked from the hundreds of students trying to be seen. Even if you are given an appointment time, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be placed with the same counselor you were seeing before.

– WSU Behavioral Health, where appointments are extremely limited. Mental health care is a joke at WSU and in Pullman. It doesn’t meet the demand of the students. Healthcare is not as easy as instructing someone to call a phone number or visit an office. When someone is suffering from a mental illness, they often don’t reach out for help themselves. We need better resources for our students and faculty.

Too many students slip through the cracks or go completely untreated because they cannot access the resources available to them on campus.

In the end, it’s clear—we need better resources for our students suffering from mental illness.

Jenny Landon, author of Growing Through Grief, and creator of The Lotus Project says, “It’s an unfortunate truth that suicide carries with it a stigma of shame, a stigma that can only be removed by changing the way we speak and think about depression and suicide.”

Landon writes that if we want to see change, we have to start recognizing the illness involved and stop seeing suicide as a choice.

“We have to start speaking openly about our brokenness and be willing to look at all avenues of healing,” she adds.

Lerria Schuh offers these words of advice:
“Be aware of those close to you. Notice a change in behavior of a loved one or someone you spend a lot of time with? Ask questions. Be present. Do more than post a suicide hotline on your social media page. Tell the person you care, take them by the hand and get them help. It won’t be easy or fun, but you may be the one person who sees the only crack in armor that your depressed loved one wears,” says Schuh.