Wednesday, March 15, 2006

How does George Washington University justify telling a student who is contemplating suicide that he is violating the code of student conduct ["GWU Suit Prompts Questions of Liability; School Barred Depressed Student," front page, March 10]? GWU seems more worried about its own liability than about helping its students. While I was in college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, several of my fellow students committed suicide. These events still haunt me almost 10 years later.

The questions of liability are complex, but colleges should encourage students to seek help for depression, especially when it becomes so serious that students are contemplating suicide, and they should make sure students have access to quality mental health treatment.

Kicking students out of school for seeking help only deters them from seeking help and increases the risk of a tragic event.

SARAH DASH

Washington

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As a psychiatrist I was troubled to read that George Washington University threatened Jordan Nott with suspension and expulsion because he had checked himself into the hospital for his depression and suicidal thoughts. Mr. Nott had tried to help a friend and fellow student who jumped out of a window on campus and killed himself. Instead of trying to kill himself, though, Mr. Nott sought help.

Because of the excessive liability concerns the university faces should one of its students commit suicide, this supposedly enlightened institution compounded the stigma and double standard that those with mental illness already endure. If a student had been hospitalized for diabetes and treated with insulin, would GWU have suspended or expelled him because he could represent a danger to himself if his blood sugar became dangerously high or low? Why should mental illness be treated differently than physical illness?

Shame on GWU administrators, and if any staff members at the GWU Hospital and the counseling center violated the student's confidentiality to allow the administrators to learn why and where he was hospitalized, shame on them, too.

I hope the hospital, the university and the appropriate professional licensing boards will investigate this breach of patient confidentiality and hold the staff accountable. I also applaud Mr. Nott for pursuing a lawsuit with such important implications.

STEVE WHITEFIELD

Clarksville