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Naples Daily News

A semester and a half into his college career at FGCU, Daniel Langfelder killed himself in his dorm room on February 2, 2010. The freshman had been battling depression and bad reactions to a number of different medications used to treat that depression.

While older people are significantly more likely than college students to take their own lives, suicide is the second-leading cause of death among college students, after car accidents. By comparison, suicide is the ninth most common cause of death among the general U.S. population.

ESTERO —
She was the future occupational therapist, interested in helping disabled children gain more independence and mobility.

He was the hopeful counselor, determined to save people from the depression that plagued him.

They are among the young lives cut short by suicide.

While older people are significantly more likely than college students to take their own lives, suicide is the second-leading cause of death among college students, after car accidents. By comparison, suicide is the ninth most common cause of death among the general U.S. population.

Their deaths vex parents and friends, who often struggle with the warning signs they may have missed, or that, just as often, the victims worked hard to conceal.

What's more, the passing of each young person who had a whole life ahead leaves a lingering question. What grand and beautiful things could have existed in the void now left behind?

In the past two years, Florida Gulf Coast University's campus community had to ponder this question at least three times, as three students died by apparent suicide. And while the rate of suicides among college students isn't going up, it's not going down either, despite growing efforts by college officials to create a safety net out of their campus communities.

* * * * *

Psychologist Thomas Joiner compares a suicide on a college campus to a hurricane.

It may be an anomaly in an average student's college experience, but it has the power to completely change the tenor of a campus.

"It's a catastrophe," said Joiner, a psychology professor at Florida State University. "It's just like if a natural disaster hits a campus. When people undergo that, usually their best comes out. That's wonderful. The bad side of it is when the death sort of gets talked about in a hushed tone, and the stigma gets pushed further."

But even as the level of awareness around mental health issues increases, and the number of resources for students goes up, young adults are fighting an uphill battle of hormones and burgeoning self-awareness.

Study, recent Virginia Tech settlement bring spotlight to college suicide

"Young people today have become more concerned about extrinsic rewards and issues in their lives," said Jon Brunner, director of FGCU's Counseling and Psychological Services Center. "They've become more concerned about status, more concerned about relationships, less concerned about things like personal development. The hypothesis is that this has created more stress."

While suicides among college students are holding steady, after an alarming spike in the 1990s, the numbers of young people exhibiting signs of clinical and emotional issues has increased, Brunner said. At FGCU alone, the growing number of students seeking counseling each year has outpaced enrollment growth.

"Every year in terms of sessions, we probably see anywhere from a 16 to 20 percent increase," Brunner said. "That's with an (enrollment) increase of students by 8 or 9 percent a year."

* * * * *

Every story is different.

In one case, it might be a girl with seemingly no outward signs of depression, no attempts to reach out to her family to talk about what was bothering her.

For Debbie Dargan, that girl was her daughter.

Christina Dargan was found dead at a Lee County park Sept. 27, 2009. At age 21, she had taken her own life, a few months after going on anti-depressant medication.

As an FGCU transfer student, she had a passion for working with disabled children, especially through a horseback riding program in Loxahatchee, near her home in Wellington. She wanted to convert that into a career, to help children full-time.

"It's just hard to pinpoint," said Debbie Dargan, Christina's mother. "It's not like my daughter suffered from depression her whole life, and this was just another phase in her depression. She was a high-achieving kid her whole life. She was in the top of her class in high school. She was going on to a master's program."

"It's not like my daughter suffered from depression her whole life, and this was just another phase in her depression," said Debbie Dargan, Christina's mother. She was a high-achieving kid her whole life. She was in the top of her class in high school. She was going on to a master's program."

If anything, Dargan said, Christina was anxious. But she didn't talk about it — at least not with her mother.

"She made a bigger deal out of things than she needed to, but I probably do that myself," Debbie Dargan said. "She would have benefited from talking to someone about how to deal with anxiety."

If that was what plagued her, Christina wasn't alone.

"The most prevalent issue for us is anxiety," Brunner said. "Depression can certainly have some bad consequences. But, if we look at the diagnosis, we find a lot more students who have high levels of anxiety."

Whatever the cause, statistics show suicide is on the minds of vast numbers of college-age people.

In a 2008 survey of 26,000 undergraduate students by the American Psychological Association, one-half of students said they had considered suicide at some point in their lives.

By contrast, roughly 15.3 percent of all Americans reported having such thoughts, according to a World Health Organization survey from the same year.

The difference in numbers indicates suicidal thoughts are becoming more common, at least among college-age Americans.

* * * * *

For almost every young person who hides the warning signs, there's a teenager who struggled with depression for years before taking his own life.For Bob and Deborah Langfelder, that boy was their son.

Daniel Langfelder went on anti-depressants at age 14 or 15. The bubbly, blue-eyed boy still had a normal adolescence. Popular in high school, he was voted the kid with the best eyes.

"He was just such a good soul," his father said.

Naples Daily News

A semester and a half into his college career at FGCU, Daniel Langfelder killed himself in his dorm room on February 2, 2010. The freshman had been battling depression and bad reactions to a number of different medications used to treat that depression.

But by age 19 he felt like something was irretrievably wrong with his brain. As he transitioned from one medication to another with the help of a campus psychiatrist, trying to find equilibrium for his body, he despaired and became erratic — "from one poison to the next poison," Bob Langfelder said.

Daniel Langfelder's last journal entry was about the difficulty of getting off his medication.

"The last time (we talked), I said, 'Dan, you have to slow down,'" said Bob Langfelder from his Venice, Fla., home. "He just wanted to get off it so bad that he just went too fast. I think he was having psychotic episodes where he was seeing things on the wall."

The following day, Feb. 2, 2010, Daniel Langfelder killed himself in his dorm room, according to a medical examiner's report.

The loss of Daniel Langfelder, then a freshman at FGCU, was keenly felt. At his memorial service, 200 people showed up.

"He was only there for a semester-and-a-half, and people were talking about him like they were best friends forever," Bob Langfelder said. "He was planning on becoming, believe it or not, a therapist to help people with depression."

On a Facebook page dedicated to his passing, even recently people were still posting messages sharing how much he's missed.

* * * * *

FSU's Joiner calls college a "suicide buffer" because of the unique circumstances of university life — the many points of contact students have with professors, advisers, administrators and peers.

"Their rates of suicide are a lot lower than young people who are not in college," he said of college students. "Health care is good, and the other thing is there are lots of opportunities for social connection. I think the ways they can do better, though, is let's stop tip-toeing around this."

Joiner said an approach that treats depression and suicide as an open community issue is best for reaching out to students in need, and educating people around them.

FGCU keeps a small staff of counselors and therapists who meet one-on-one with students, depending on their needs. In addition, a psychiatrist works at the Counseling and Psychological Services office three days a week. Any student prescribed a medication has to meet with the psychiatrist; that student is also required to sit down with a counselor.

But even with an open framework, it means little if school counseling departments are under-staffed.

"For years, if you look at the counseling center directors' studies, (what they're saying is), 'Hey, we're seeing more students with issues, we need more resources,'" Brunner said.

FGCU keeps a small staff of counselors and therapists who meet one-on-one with students, depending on their needs. In addition, a psychiatrist works at the Counseling and Psychological Services office three days a week. Any student prescribed a medication has to meet with the psychiatrist; that student is also required to sit down with a counselor.

"The psychiatrist works very quickly and only sees students for 30 minutes," Brunner said. "We feel that students need to have more of a relationship with someone. (Seeing the psychiatrist) is just a medication maintenance issue. That's not enough."

* * * * *

It was not until after her daughter's death that Debbie Dargan learned her daughter had been taking anti-depressants.

"They prescribe medication like candy now," Dargan said. "I had no idea she was on medication."

Dargan, who admits she is staunchly against mood-altering medication, also feels that her daughter may have been reluctant to discuss the fact that she was taking medicine for that reason.

Her daughter's death only reinforces her feelings.

In April 2009, Christina Dargan started taking an anti-depressant that alters the brain's chemical makeup to prevent seizures and symptoms of panic disorder. In September, she went to see a different doctor, who prescribed her a new antidepressant that works with the brain's serotonin levels, but can also cause suicidal thoughts. Four days later, she was dead.

"Every single ad that's on television (for antidepressants), they say, 'may cause suicidal thoughts,'" Dargan said. "I didn't see that before, but now when I see these ads, that's all I hear."

* * * * *

If anything links the deaths of Christina Dargan and Danny Langfelder, it is their parents' insistence that they would have been better off talking about their problems than receiving medication.

"What they say is that the human brain is not fully developed until 25, 26 years old, which you can tell," said Bob Langfelder, who has a master's degree in counseling. "When you're messing with those neurotransmitters, beefing them up artificially, who knows what it does."

Naples Daily News

A semester and a half into his college career at FGCU, Daniel Langfelder killed himself in his dorm room on February 2, 2010. The freshman had been battling depression and bad reactions to a number of different medications used to treat that depression.

Even among college counseling directors, there is disagreement about the use of mood-altering medications. Some say it vastly complicates the treatment of people who are, in effect, still adolescents. Others say the advent of antidepressants is a boon to mental health treatment.

Brunner, while he agrees that therapy is an important component of treatment, disagrees with the assessment that medications can cloud efforts to help someone.

"I don't think it necessarily complicates the picture," he said. "I think it augments the service that we offer. If we have a student who is in the depths of depression or who has undiagnosed bipolar illness, we can assist them with that. We actually look at the medication as being a helpful adjunct."Dargan, while she believes her daughter received counseling at FGCU's center, doesn't know for sure where her daughter got prescriptions for the medications she was taking when she died.

Bob Langfelder, too, blames the medicine, and said he believes mental health treatment today is "primitive." However, he credits the counseling center at FGCU for trying to help Danny wean himself from his anti-depressants.

Dargan said she believes students need to learn the signs of trouble in their friends, especially if they know a friend is taking medication: "to be their monitoring buddy."

For parents, whose kids are sometimes thousands of miles away in college, being a monitoring buddy can be difficult. Friends shouldn't be afraid to step into that role, he said, and ask hard questions — blunt questions, like: Are you thinking about hurting yourself?

"To put it in college-age terms, when it's about as hard an issue to broach as any, my advice is to man up and do it," Joiner said. "A lot of things in life are hard. We just ought to get this out of the closet. This is nothing to be ashamed of."