As residents of Kirkland House mourned the death of Dominic J. Armijo '95, the details of the University's handling of the case began to come to light last week.

Armijo, a native of Boulder, Colo., was found by police in his dorm room shortly after 11 a.m. on January 22.

He was hanged from a pull-up bar in an area of his room described by police sources as "between his bedroom and bathroom."

A government concentrator active in his house and a member of the Reserve Officers Training Corps, Armijo was pronounced dead at Cambridge City Hospital about 30 minutes after he was found.

Officials say Armijo may have attempted suicide before.

In December he took a large dose of sleeping pills while at home, said Dr. Randolph Catlin Jr., head of the Mental Health Service at University Health Services (UHS).

A Harvard-affiliated psychiatrist who spoke with Armijo following the December incident did not consider it serious enough to breach Armijo's confidentiality and inform Kirkland House Senior Tutor Garth McCavana about the incident, Catlin said.

"From my understanding, it was not clearly defined as a suicide [attempt], and even if [it] had been, since he was on the road to recovery, it was not appropriate to tell the senior tutor," Catlin said.

McCavana, reached at his office earlier this week, repeatedly refused to comment on the case.

Catlin said defining a suicide attempt is a difficult matter and that the potential ambiguity of the definition might make it less likely that an attempt is reported to officials.

"You tell your patient that every-thing is confidential except some-thing that is potentially seriously harmful," he said.

Experts outside of Harvard's psychiatric community said it is difficult for psychotherapists to determine when a patient's state-mandated confidentiality must be breached.

"Unless they thought that [Armi- jo] was going to go right out and do something,they can't breach confidentiality," said LeahFygetakis, head of Boston University's counselingcenter.

"[UHS] probably knows so much about his lifeand a lot which might allay a lot of concernswhich people have, but...confidentiality goes tothe grave," she added.

According to Fygetakis, Massachusetts state lawdictates that the University provide a reasonablestandard of care for its students.

In other words, even if the decision tomaintain confidentiality was incorrect, mosttherapists would have likely done the same thing.