Content Warning: suicide.
The parents of Harry Armstrong Evans, a student at The University of Exeter who took his own life in 2021, began a government petition in December last year calling for ‘Harry’s Law’ to ensure universities both record and publish data on students lost to suicide each year.
Student newspapers from at least 22 UK universities have agreed to support the campaign.
Universities currently do not legally have to record or reveal the rate of student suicides, as Alice Armstrong Evans, Harry’s mother, discovered when she began an inquiry into how student suicides were handled at Exeter.
Speaking to student papers in support of Harry’s Law, she said: “I was taken by surprise when I found out that Exeter University would not give me the information on suicides that I requested. I was even more surprised following a Freedom of Information Act request that, again, the true numbers were not made known.
“I was trying to get accurate information from a reputable organisation – a Russell Group university – why was this not available? Slowly, bit by bit, I found out that no universities kept records of student suicides. No records of such deaths were kept anywhere, and if students took their own lives outside of a university campus or accommodation, then it was quite likely that the university would not even know about the suicide.”
The petition can be found by scanning the QR code or by searching ‘Introduce new rules regarding the suicide of higher education students’ on the UK Parliament petitions website. It is currently at around 1700 signatures and has a deadline for 8 May 2023.
Mrs Evans added: “How on Earth can anyone analyse why students take their own lives without any records of where, when, how, gender, age, and any other factors which would contribute to our knowledge of student suicides. We will never know how many student suicides have taken place since the inception of universities and colleges.”
Harry, 21, a third-year student, took his life in June 2021. Just one month prior, he had emailed his personal tutor and the University of Exeter’s Wellbeing Services to explain the decline in his mental health.
Mrs Evans also contacted the Wellbeing Services to express concern for her son in the same month, but the issues she raised were not followed up.
The coroner investigating Harry’s death, Guy Davies, criticised the response by the University of Exeter. His ‘Report to Prevent Future Deaths’, given to University of Exeter Vice Chancellor Lisa Roberts, specifically highlighted the lack of proactive, personal engagement in Harry’s case. It also recommended mandatory training for academic staff to flag up issues, in the absence of such preventative measures.
Harry’s Law would require coroners to inform universities if a student death is registered as suicide, require universities to publish the suicide rate of enrolled students annually, and allow universities to be put into ‘special measures’ if their rate of student suicides exceeds the national average.
Alice continued: “My personal view is that had I known a student on the same course Harry chose, at Exeter University, had taken his own life just one year before Harry chose to go there in 2018, then I would have had a long conversation with him about it. I would have explained that a degree is not worth taking your life over.
“If only, if only there had been a record kept, and if only we had known. But this was denied to us because – we are now led to believe – universities fear losing out on student numbers and therefore money. Those young people – you – with all your dreams of a future. We lost our son on the altar of Mammon.”
Freedom of Information Act requests in 2017 revealed seven students enrolled at the University of Sheffield died as a result of suicide in the previous four years. Further FOI requests last year revealed another four student suicides from 2018 to 2020. None were recorded in 2021 or 2022.
Meanwhile in June last year, mental health charity HUMEN released their University Mental Health League Table – The University of Sheffield scored 14th out of 80 places.