Keith Reed
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University of Iowa students represent many demographics. Where students come from determines their experience when it comes to life at a big university. Some students have trouble acclimating, and that is no fault of their own. A study has shown that young people from rural areas are more often to have an this responses to the problem: suicide.

According to a study done in May by the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics, based at Ohio State University, the rates of suicide for rural people between the ages of 10 to 24 were almost double that of their urban counterparts from 1996 to 2010.

The study looked at almost 70,000 suicides. Completed attempts were more common in males than females. For this age range, suicide was the third leading cause of death. Approximately 60 percent of the death occurred among people between the ages of 20 to 24. There are numerous explanations for these numbers. Some point to the lack of doctors in these areas, and others to access to guns. A possible psychological factor could be the isolation that many face living farther away from friends and loved ones.

A paper written by researchers in Brazil’s Universidade Federal do Ceará and the City University of New York states that while cities get bigger, certain kinds of death such as homicide become more common and suicides decrease. When the size of a city increases, the number of deaths caused by car crashes and homicides almost double, while suicide increases slowly.

Many things can be done to curb the number of suicides in rural as well as urban communities. There could be tighter restrictions on gun laws. Granted, the use for a gun varies when considering both urban and rural environments. We could also allocate medical professionals to areas in which they are far and few in between. The schools could mandate a section in health classes about the importance of mental health and how to spot someone who is in need. A campaign for the destigmatization of mental health could be immensely useful, because many different communities do not understand mental health to be an issue. Access to therapists and psychiatrists is another issue that can hinder many from partaking in their services. The services they offer can be fairly expensive, and to those who are already struggling with money, this is a reminder of that.

As a college student, I, like many others, know/have known someone who is not doing well and could use an outside source to vent about problems. There are many places in the UI community that can be of assistance, such as University Counseling Service. It is available to currently enrolled students whose status can be verified through MAUI. It is located in the  building that also houses Student Health, Westlawn.