More than 70% of universities do not track student suicides

Despite ongoing reports of poor mental health and suicides among post-secondary students, an exclusive CBC News investigation has found that more than 70% of Canadian universities do not track suicides or attempted suicides among students. Without that data, experts say it’s difficult to even understand how big the issue is, write Lori Ward and Aloysius Wong for CBC News.

CBC News asked 52 of the country’s largest universities whether or not they track both suicide attempts and deaths by suicides and requested the data for the last five years. Fifteen schools said they internally track student suicides. Of those schools, only six provided CBC with actual figures.

Of the remaining 37 universities, 24 said they did not track. A further five replied to the request but did not respond to the question about tracking, and another five schools said they track medical events but not necessarily suicide.
Full report on the CBC News site