Harvard, in addition to Columbia, MIT and Yale, recently began a collaborative effort with the Jed Foundation, a group dedicated to suicide prevention, to look into developing more successful campus suicide prevention frameworks.
Kadison says he doesn’t think the Shin case will change how Harvard deals with mentally ill students, unless the law is significantly reinterpreted.
He cites Harvard’s dedication to carefully coordinating care—a major issue in the Shin case—as evidence that the case’s outcome will not markedly change Harvard policies.
Iuliano writes in an e-mail that it is “awfully hard” to predict how the Shin case will effect Harvard.
And Hyman says the case is not a serious factor in shaping mental health policy for Harvard.
“We’re not going to be driven by the Shin case,” he says. “We’re going to be driven by taking the best possible care of our students.”
–Staff writer Katharine A. Kaplan can be reached at kkaplan@fas.harvard.edu.