Blind Ego

Though few in the community realize it, the first week of October marked the annual observation of National Mental Illness Awareness Week.

It is not as disturbing that most of Harvard is unaware of the week as it is that Harvard often seems to be unaware of mental illness at all.

One might think that this community would be even more sensitive to mental illness than most given the fact that at least one student, and sometimes more, commits suicide each year. Moreover, the tragedy of the Dunster House murder-suicide is barely more than two years distant, and is still a part of the institutional memory. Perhaps the greatest tragedy is that even after such a conscience-shattering event, little has changed in the life of the University.

This point was most graphically made to me in the fall semester following the Dunster tragedy: when suggestions were solicited for the new Mather House t-shirt slogan, one resident tutor wryly offered: "Twenty-five years and no murder-suicides." What moved me was not so much the macabre humor, but the stark realization that no one realized just how close Mather House had been to a similar tragedy just months before.

During my first semester in Mather, I suffered mightily with a major clinical depressive episode. But no one seemed to notice, much less to care, about my plight. Undoubtedly I hid many of my symptoms, as clinical depressives often do, but some were outwardly visible: I stopped going to two classes altogether; I lost 20 pounds over the course of the semester; I rarely ate a meal other than dinner, and then usually a meager dinner, almost always alone. From my seventeenth-floor perch over Cambridge, I spent long nights brooding, trying desperately to fend off deeply suicidal moods that regularly haunted me. The first people to notice were my parents, at Thanksgiving break; it wasn't until I returned home for Christmas and had a series of mother-mandated medical exams that I received any professional help at all.

Making matters worse, my relations with my roommate were extremely poor, to the point of near-violence, as I eventually informed my Senior Tutor. He and I should both be thankful for Mather's peculiar architecture, which insures singles for all of its students; for otherwise, I fear that one or both of us would not have lived through the semester.

When Harvard finally did intervene, it did so at my urging, as I finally tried to avoid an academic disaster.

While I have since accepted that the Ad Board, in forcing me to leave for a semester, acted in my best interests, the decision and its impact were presented so coldly and disinterestedly that it almost became the final straw that pushed me to suicide. Only a serendipitous e-mail note from a friend, urging me not to "let them win" pulled me back from the abyss. In the end, the only official body which addressed my condition nearly killed me in the process.

Thus my reaction to the Dunster House tragedy, which occurred at the end of a semester I spent recovering at home, mixed hope with horror; while my condition might have gone unnoticed, surely something of such an extreme magnitude could have led to real and positive change. In the years since, those hopes have proven to be largely unfounded. Harvard has done much to repair its image, but little to prevent a future tragedy.

During the last days at Harvard before my leave of absence, I made a sincere plea that the inanity of the annual Mather House sophomore outing be replaced with a more meaningful day of community service that might bring the entire house together, in the process working against some of the clique-ish isolation that for me was nearly fatal. The Masters rejected the proposal, taking a stance that has come to typify the University reaction as a whole: rather than acknowledging a problem of far-ranging scope, Harvard prefers to insulate itself by writing off each death, each breakdown, as an isolated and otherwise forgettable incident. Like so many of its constituent individuals, Harvard allows ego and reputation to justify nearsightedness and inertia.

Instead of counting on good fortune to prevent or at least limit future tragedies, the University and the community should be more active. The resources available to students suffering from either acute or chronic mental illness should be enhanced and better publicized.

The stigma associated with these services must be eliminated. Most importantly, tutors and proctors should be trained to recognize the symptoms and warning signs of depression and other mental illnesses which threaten members of the community. Students should not have to rely on parents and doctors who may be hundreds or even thousands of miles away to come to their aid during a period of life-threatening illness.

Through my work with the Mental Health Awareness and Advocacy Group, I have become painfully aware of the fact that mental illness is far from rare among any population; and if Harvard is exceptional, then it is because mental illness is more prevalent here than among the general public, not less. What frightens me most of all is that even in light of the hell I have walked through, I've learned that, in many ways, I've been relatively lucky.

The experiences of others have at times been far worse than my own; many do not live through their ordeals. Perhaps we cannot prevent every suicide, but we must try to--for too many lives lie in the balance.

Jeremy Ray Jenkins '97-'98 is co-founder and co-chair of Harvard-Radcliffe Mental Health Awareness and Advocacy Group.