Parents of suicide victims, student leaders urge changes at Penn

Sept. 18--Student leaders and parents of students who committed suicide at the University of Pennsylvania are pressing the Ivy League school to do more to address mental health needs -- an issue that has been mounting on the campus since the high profile death of a promising scholar athlete last year.

"In the past two years, seven Penn students have died by suicide," the group wrote in a letter to Penn president Amy Gutmann earlier this month. "Unfortunately, the university has not taken decisive action to make sure this doesn't happen to current and future students. We need to prioritize mental wellness."

David Cahn, 19, a sophomore in Penn's Wharton School, said members of the group would meet with Penn administrators Friday to discuss the problem.

Stephen J. MacCarthy, Penn's vice president of university communications, said: "We've said many times that we are always open to good ideas, and that is the case here."

Penn has been under pressure to improve its mental health services since the death of Madison Holleran, who jumped from a Center City parking garage in January 2014. The university is being sued by the mother of another former Penn student, Arya Singh, who killed herself in 2013 with cyanide she allegedly purchased through Amazon.

The suit filed this summer against the university and the online retailer accused Penn of failing to provide support to Singh.

Neither Holleran's parents nor Singh's mother is currently part of the new group, Cahn said.

The group is calling itself the "Hamlett-Reed Mental Health Initiative," after two Penn students who took their lives, Theodric Reed and Timothy Hamlett.

Their mothers, Linda Douglas and Katherine Hamlett, have been the prime movers behind the group, Cahn said. Hamlett's son was found in the Hudson River in June, and Reed's son died in California in August 2014.

Cahn said he got to know Hamlett when he was covering her son's death for the Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper. At the end of the summer, he said, the two talked and decided they needed to form a coalition and push for change.

Cahn is taking a semester off from the student newspaper to work with the coalition, he said.

"We need practical reforms now, as opposed to subcommittee after subcommittee after subcommittee," said Cahn, who is from New York. The group is asking that every student be assigned a "mental-wellness counselor" upon arrival at Penn.

It also has requested "online scheduling of counseling services, with the option of anonymity, as well as the development of stated best practices and uniform policies around mental health leave."

"At Penn, the need is dire: A silent majority of students feel isolated, stressed and depressed," the group wrote to Gutmann. "With the 'Penn Face,' they mask their loneliness and problems."

A university task force on mental health formed after Holleran's death used the term "Penn Face" to describe how some students hide their depression.

ssnyder@phillynews.com

215-854-4693 @ssnyderinq www.philly.com/campusinq

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