'What if Yale finds out?' Suicidal students are pressured to withdraw from Yale ...

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‘What if Yale finds out?’

Suicidal students are pressured to withdraw from Yale, then have to apply to get back into the university

By William Wan
November 11, 2022 at 7:00 a.m. EST

For months, she struggled silently with a sense of worthlessness. She had panic attacks that left her trembling. Nightmares that made her cry. ... She’d told only a handful of friends about the sexual assault she endured while she was home the summer after her freshman year. Now, as she finished her sophomore year at Yale University, the trauma finally became unbearable. ... On a June day after the 2021 spring semester, the 20-year-old college student swallowed a bottle of pills at her off-campus apartment. ... As she slowly woke up at the emergency room in New Haven, Conn., one thought overwhelmed her: “What if Yale finds out?”

She’d heard about other students being forced to leave because of depression and suicidal thoughts, and about the lengthy, nerve-racking reapplication process. It was one reason that the student — whom The Post agreed to identify by her first initial, S., to protect her privacy — told only a few people about her problems.

Three months earlier, a Yale freshman named Rachael Shaw-Rosenbaum had killed herself on campus after contemplating the consequences of withdrawing from the school, her family said. Her death had renewed fierce debate about campus mental health, the way Yale treated suicidal students and the university’s reinstatement policies. Similar controversies have engulfed other universities as student mental health problems soar across the country.

Confined to a room at Yale New Haven Psychiatric Hospital, S. asked her nurses and doctors with growing fear, “Do you have to tell them?” ... Yes, they replied. Because she was a student, hospital staffers said, they needed to let college officials know, she recalled. They gave her consent papers to sign for the release of her medical information. She remembers how vulnerable she felt in her thin hospital clothes as she signed the release.

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If you or someone you know needs help, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988. You can also reach a crisis counselor by messaging the Crisis Text Line at 741741.

Story editing by Lynda Robinson, photo editing by Mark Miller, copy editing by Gilbert Dunkley, design by Marie Alconada Brooks and Dominic Fisher. Alice Crites contributed research to this report.

By William Wan
William Wan is an enterprise reporter focused on narrative and high-impact stories at The Washington Post. He often writes about mental health and people on society's margin. He previously served as a national health reporter during the pandemic, China correspondent, roving U.S. correspondent, national security reporter and religion reporter. Twitter https://twitter.com/thewanreport