Dr. Victoria Grinman, a psychotherapist and owner of a private practice called Growing Kind Minds who also works with college students, tells Fox News Digital that "colleges across the board are seeing mental health crises."
This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
The recent death of a Princeton University undergraduate student, just weeks away from completing his junior year, has prompted renewed conversation about how Ivy League schools handle mental health crises on campus.
Lauren Blackburn, 23, was an English major and creative writing minor from Indiana. He was missing for several days before authorities found him deceased in a lake. Officials have not released his cause of death or said if there was any foul play involved.
Blackburn was the third Princeton undergraduate student to die in two years and the eighth since 2021. Six of those deaths were determined to be suicides, as The Princetonian first reported.
Princeton Professor Yiyun Li, who directs the university's creative writing program, lost both of her sons to suicide, one of whom, James Li, was a Princeton student when he died in 2024.
IVY LEAGUE SCHOOLS RECEIVED $6.4B IN FEDERAL FUNDING IN 2024
Princeton University student Lauren Blackburn was found dead in Lake Carnegie. (Princeton University/ iStock)
"What can parents do but give their children the space to be, and allow them to do what they need so that they can become more fully themselves?" Yiyun Li wrote in a New Yorker essay titled "The Deaths - And Lives - of Two Sons" published on March 23.
"And yet, despite the parents' efforts, and despite all the beings and doings that occur as the children grow, some among them die before their time. Children die, and they are not happy. And their parents can never know whether those children died because they were not happy, or whether they were not happy because they sensed, too early, that they must face their own deaths."
While mental health crises and suicides are not unique to Princeton, or Ivy League schools generally, experts say Ivy League students face distinct challenges and pressures while attending the country's most prestigious schools. Experts also say Ivy League institutions should be dedicating more funds to mental health resources than they do currently.
"I think it comes down to the demands, and I would say almost 100% of the time, the Ivy League schools have really high rigorous demands," Ivy Ellis, certified mental health therapist and Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) who regularly works with college students, told Fox News Digital. "Whereas at other universities, the demands can be lower in terms of just how much schoolwork is asked, like how many classes they have to take, how much homework they have, how many tests they have."
Ellis added her belief that while Ivy League schools do "care" about their students, "There's limited funding and limited resources that go towards mental health."
"There's limited funding and limited resources that go towards mental health."
"So almost all the universities and Ivy League schools have counseling centers in place, and I know they're excellent, excellent counselors," she said. "They work really hard. There's just such a high number of students that need that support, and the number of counselors just doesn't really meet that level of support."
NEW REPORT SOUNDS ALARM ON 'STAGGERING' AMOUNT OF FOREIGN MONEY POURING INTO US UNIVERSITIES
Blackburn was the third Princeton undergraduate student to die in two years and the eighth since 2021. Six of those deaths were determined to be suicides, as The Daily Princetonian first reported. (Oliver Morris/Getty Images)
Dr. Victoria Grinman, a psychotherapist and owner of a private practice called Growing Kind Minds who also works with college students, told Fox News Digital that "colleges across the board are seeing mental health crises, unfortunate things happening and people struggling."
"So I don't think that it's necessarily just about Ivy League institutions. But we also have to be aware that when ... a teen is entering into an Ivy League institution, there are some expectations and standards that differ. And with those standards comes a lot of self-expectations," she said.
"[W]hen ... a teen is entering into an Ivy League institution, there are some expectations and standards that differ."
None of the eight traditional Ivy League schools - Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia - responded to Fox News Digital's request for student death data between 2020 and the present, or what resources they offer students experiencing mental health crises.
At Dartmouth University, two students were found dead in the Connecticut River last year; one of those student's deaths has been attributed to a hazing incident. The university also saw four student deaths in 2021.
Dartmouth students Kexin Cai and Won Jang were found dead in the Connecticut River between May and July 2024. (Bing Guan/Bloomberg/ LinkedIn/ Facebook)
Following the two 2024 deaths of students, both of whom were Asian, now-graduates Daniel Lin and Deborah Jang penned an op-ed for The Dartmouth criticizing the school's response to the two tragedies as racist.
"A symptom of this invisible racism is that we ourselves become invisible - to others and to ourselves," they wrote. "...There was no lasting public discussion on the racialization of the two deaths. It's not lost on us that two Asian students died in three months. The College could have named this; they could have made an effort to reach out to the Asian community. This reality leaves me feeling like these conversations can only happen behind closed doors, mostly among Asian students."
JEWISH COLLEGE STUDENTS SAY THEY'RE SCARED TO GO TO CLASS, BLAME UNIVERSITIES FOR SILENCE ON ANTISEMITISM
The authors added that "Dartmouth does not have even the bare minimum support for Asian students."
The College Green on the campus of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New