This article from Salon.com talks how colleges deal with suicidal behavior — with some colleges expelling students who exhibit symptoms of suicide. The opening example for the story is a Brown student who was encouraged to take a leave of absence after being hospitalized for suicidal behavior. She was later welcomed back to Brown as long as she engaged in counseling. From the article:

On a chilly afternoon in the fall of 2005, “Jane,” a 19-year-old junior at Brown University, sat on her dorm bed and decided to follow through with her plan to kill herself. In despair over a psychology paper she couldn’t finish, and unable to shake her choking depression, she swallowed, two by two, the 120 pills she had stashed — the antidepressant Lexapro, Tylenol and sleep aids. When she failed to pass out, she got nervous and asked a friend to take her to the hospital, where doctors gave her charcoal to soak up the drugs.

Somehow, the school learned what Jane had done. So when she returned to campus a week later, a Brown dean and a campus psychologist called her into a meeting with this message: “We need to talk about where you’re going from here.” They meant it literally — the school would encourage her to take a leave of absence.

Overwhelmed by a rise of troubled students in the past several years, colleges are dealing with mental health issues with renewed intensity. A 2006 survey found that more than 9 percent of college students seriously contemplated suicide in the previous year. Further, college researchers estimate that more than 1,000 kill themselves each year, making it the second leading cause of death among college-age men and women (after auto accidents). Many colleges are responding by beefing up counseling centers, offering free therapy sessions and forming support groups on everything from body image to stress management. But they’re bewildered about what to do with students like Jane who quietly collect pills and attempt suicide under their noses. Increasingly, they are worried about their own institutional liabilities and policies regarding troubled students. [full text]