Suicide is the second leading cause of death among college students.
More than half of U.S. college students have considered suicide at some point.
Untreated depression is the top cause of suicide.
15 percent of students were diagnosed with depression in 2008, up from 10 percent four years ago, the American College Health Association found.
In a horrifying reoccurrence of suicide at NYU, the body of Andrew Noble, 20, was found in Bobst Library yesterday morning.
The junior from Irvington, N.Y., jumped from a 10th-floor balcony to the marble lobby, police said.
NYU President John Sexton sent an e-mail to the NYU community confirming Noble’s suicide. “No matter how difficult things might seem at any particular moment, your life is filled with promise,” Sexton wrote. “I am certain of this: There are many resources to help you, and harming oneself is absolutely the wrong choice.”
Students at NYU yesterday said they just finished a stressful midterm period.
“There’s a lot of pressure and stress,” said freshman Olivia Scofield, 18. “Our parents are paying a lot for it, so you just want to do good and get good grades.”
A spate of suicides in recent years, including four in 2004, have troubled NYU. Six-foot-high Plexiglas barriers were installed in the library’s interior balconies after one student jumped and another fell in 2003.
“It has some kind of weird stigma because so many have killed themselves in there,” said student Robert Kennedy, 19.