The Ones We've Lost: The Student Loan Debt Suicides

Suicide is the dark side of the student lending crisis and, despite all the media attention to the issue of student loans, it has been severely under-reported.

Yoder had been a graduate student in organic chemistry at Illinois State University but after incurring $100,000 in student loan debt, he struggled to find a job in his field. Later that night, Jason, 35, left the family’s mobile home. Concerned about her son’s mood, Jan Yoder decided in the early morning hours to go look for him on campus, where a professor she ran into joined her in the search. The two of them discovered his body in one of the labs on campus and called campus police at 8:30AM. 32 minutes later, Jason was declared dead due to nitrogen asphyxiation...

...people simply aren’t able to pay all the money they owe. In the past few years, the rate of defaults for federal loans has increased at an alarming rate.... Currently, 36 million Americans have outstanding federal loans....
A statement published on the website by the American Association of Suicidology (APS) notes, “There is a clear and direct relationship between rates of unemployment and suicide. The peak rate of suicide in 1933 occurred one year after the total US unemployment rate reached 25% of the labor force...

... Suicides and suicide attempts have increased dramatically in several European countries. Not surprisingly, the problem seems particularly acute in Greece and Italy, two countries that have been hit hardest by austerity measures, and have seen a jump in suicides.

In 2011, Andreas Loverdos, the Minister of Health in Greece, announced that suicides had likely increased by 40% in the first five months of that year when compared to 2010. The numbers are equally as grim in Italy....

There are psychological consequences when economies fall into decay....

                              .......................................Cryn Johannsen