Victor Schwartz, MD

This video examines the differences between typical, non-pathological reactions to the stress induced by the COVID-19 pandemic and psychopathology (or mental illness).

In his 1918 essay, “Mourning and Melancholia,” Sigmund Freud examined the difference between mourning and melancholia, what we would now call major depression or depressive disorder.

One would easily imagine from a recent TV report that psychiatrically ill and suicidal students are routinely being shipped off to hospitals and removed from their colleges without due process or discussion.

After a campus suicide, who is at increased risk of suicide in the near future? The answer might surprise you (or not).

Suicide contagion and clusters are more likely among young people in contained communities such as college campuses.

In the past few years, college mental health issues have received increasing attention by the mental health community, the public, administrators, and legislators. Events such as the death of MIT student Elizabeth Shin and the subsequent legal battle, and the series of suicides at NYU a few years ago received prominent media coverage.