Research also shows that the suicide rate remains highest among elderly people and next highest among those under 25. The 1990 report states that the elderly, who constitute 12 percent of the population, committed 21 percent of all suicides, while the young, 15 percent of the population, committed 16 percent.

Although a comprehensive ethnic analysis of suicide and depression is not yet available, more men and women who are white kill themselves than those who are not white, according to a 1983 article in Harvard Magazine. Two-thirds of all suicides in America are committed by white males.

At Harvard, studies that track how students from different ethnic groups use various university services have just gotten underway, and so far they have yielded little consistent data. Approximately one out of 14 Asian undergraduates and one out of eight Black students--compared to about one out of six white students--sought help at Mental Health Services last year. But at the Bureau of Study Counsel, those percentages did not hold, and research into this area continues.

"It has a great deal to do with cultural expectations," says Dr. Charles P. Ducey, director of the Bureau of Study Counsel, of the relatively large number of Asian-Americans who seek advice at the Bureau. That Asian parents often emphasize achievement may be a significant factor in depression among Asian-American students, he says.

Women at Harvard have to cope with the particular pressures of being a sexual minority, says Nadja B. Gould, a clinical social worker at Mental Health Services and supervisor for a number of counseling and outreach services available at Harvard.

The Lonely and the Heartbroken

The clinicians and counselors interviewed for this article all agreed that loneliness is one of the most common triggers for depression among Harvard students, especially after the breakup of an intimate relationship.

"The most common general category of issues surrounds relationships--boyfriends, girlfriends, roommates," Bailin says. And Powell says he diagnoses many students as having reactive depressions, caused usually by the breakup of "a significant romantic relationship" and "the sense that your life will never be the same without a loved one."

Ducey says he sees a whole group of students who come in not because of academic problems, but because of recent breakups. "Loss is probably the major immediate precipitant of depression, and I think research has supported that a great deal," Ducey says.

Harvard first-years commonly suffer from a different kind of separation--homesickness. "A lot of the students who come to [Mental Health Services] have had very close, warm relationships with teachers and family and friends back home," Powell says. "And now they're coming to Harvard--which is for some a cold water bath--and suddenly all those things that gave them support are gone. It seems everyone doesn't know their name, nobody smiles at them when they walk across campus."

"College," says O'Neil, "is a time of a lot of confusion and change--of becoming an adult, of becoming independent, of the realization of the loneliness and difficulty of doing that. For many students it's being thrown into a competitive environment, the pressures to do well, to succeed and fit in, and of course the regular family pressures."

The Harvard Factor

Although most of the pressures Harvard students face are typical of any college, some are unique to Harvard, Ducey says. "Because of the name, families may expect a lot of reflected glory," he says. "Parents may be more demanding. They think because this is Harvard, this is the best."

Many Harvard students become depressed because they lose confidence from the outset. "A lot of students might say, 'My God, this guy's a math whiz, and I can't measure up," says Ducey. He warns that such an outlook often turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the student turning exaggerated self-perceptions of inadequacy into real failures.

"Most students can see a distinction between their performance and their feeling of adequacy," Catlin says. "A particularly difficult situation is when a person bases his or her self-esteem in a very narrow area of performance--like, say, ice skating--especially if they've been told that they were the best in high school."