TOhe had told his parents who went to the university, to the Federico II of Naples, to deliver the degree thesis. It wasn’t true, and for this reason Diana Biondi, 27, she killed herselfthrowing himself off a cliff. Nineteen years, a failed appeal and an apology message for the parents: “My life is a failure”: these are the words of another university student, who she committed suicide in the toilets of the Iulm university in Milan, on February 1st. In November 2022 he had been a boy from Padua a crashing the car not to have to show up graduation party made up. THE suicides in university they are no longer isolated cases: what is happening to Italian university students?
“We don’t want caresses and pats on the back”
“We’re starting to talk about it again,” he said a few days ago in a video on Instagram Emma Ruzzon, president of the Student Council of the University of Padua, with reference to psychological distress and suicides among university students. “But we only see caresses and pats on the back, no one who seriously takes charge of this matter. We don’t want paternalism, we don’t want, as someone said, a free degree or a political 18th. And if these are the answers you know that you are lying and that the theme is another ».
From serial lies to suicides in University. Research
One in three students lies to their parents about their university exams: detects it portal survey School.net, which in recent weeks has questioned 1,100 girls and boys currently enrolled in university. And what is even more alarming is that “in about half of the cases, we are talking about 16% of the total, the lie is systematic” While “if it were discovered from the family on the real state of things, 25% believe they could be prey to a state of despair and the same percentage say they can also hypothesize a extreme gesture». Social pressure, parental expectations, fear of failure are the uncomfortable conditions on which the castle of lies is grafted.
1 out of 3 students lies about exams given
«Sometimes it starts for no specific reason: one in 3 starts with seemingly harmless little lies to ease the pressure, only to then find themselves in a parallel reality which, for one in 10, becomes a script from which it is impossible to go back and which requires you to continue lying».
The fuse is triggered by the idea that some missteps can disappoint those who have bet on them. First of all the family: about 1 out of 4 “liars” say they have hidden the reality of the facts to reassure their parents. About 1 in 5 did so to avoid a fight at home. While one out of 10 resorted to lying for the shame of not being up to the task entrusted to him.
It starts with a small, innocent lie
In short, 72% of those interviewed confess that parents, relatives and friends do not have a clear idea of what their academic performance is. A situation that, at a certain point, appears hopeless. 5% of those who have slipped into the vortex of lies are bringing it up to the threshold of graduation, implying that the date of the thesis discussion is now near, when in fact it is quite far away. Another 10% gave the impression that they took more exams than they actually took.
Graduation, that “piece of paper dreamed of by parents”
The solution, according to the interviewees, is not only that of psychological support. Only for 15% this is a possible keystone. Most identify the source of the pressures on families: it is they who have to understand that a degree is not necessarily synonymous with success (as much as 46% of the interviewees see it). 31% would concentrate on the other front, that of universityinviting the academic community to a more humane and comprehensive approach to studies.
This is confirmed by Daniele Grassucci, director of Skuola.net: «Students who come to lie to their families are about a third of the total, in line with what was also found by Skuola.net in 2018 following another wave of suicides among university students. Virtually nothing has changed in these five years, on the contrary families continued to plan the high school-university ‘double’ in defiance of the real aspirations of their children and the needs of the labor market». In short, while students scramble to reach a piece of paper dreamed of by their parents, there are empty jobs, which could be filled through less academic and more practical training courses.
The student law proposal against anxiety and loneliness
To deal with what is evidently a very serious psychological discomfort, the Union of Academics and the Network of High School Students has formulated a bill, presented today to the Chamber of Deputies, together with MPs Elisabetta Piccolotti, of Avs, Elisa Pirro of M5S, Rachele Scarpa, promoter of the parliamentary intergroup for the protection and promotion of mental health, and Nicola Zingaretti of the Democratic Party.
The proposal comes after the dissemination with the collaboration of Spi Cgil of a questionnaire throughout the country, which saw over 30 thousand responses. «The most felt feeling during the pandemic period was boredom for 76% of respondents. Anxiety also emerges at 59% and a sense of loneliness at 57%. Then there are particularly alarming results: 28% of the sample experienced eating disorders, while 14.5% experienced self-harm. In the light of these data, we hoped that politics would react to try to support the mental health of the students and prevent any form of inconvenience”.
As explained by Camilla Velotta, of the Executive of middle school students, the objective of the bill is «to establish, regulate and finance a psychological assistance service, psychotherapy and school and university counseling, which can be based on professional staff and interface with the territorial health service, ensuring that students who need it are taken care of. We ask that the State invest at least one hundred million euros a year to recruit multidisciplinary teams of professionals in the area, whose skills must guarantee assistance in relation to the specific needs of the students”.
Istat data on the psychological discomfort of university students
According to Istat data, in Italy every year there are about 4,000 deaths by suicide (figure calculated taking into consideration the over 15s). There are 468 suicides in the age group between 15 and 34, of these there are about 200 cases among the under 24s, a very high percentage of them being university students. Among university students, 33% suffer from anxiety, 27% from depression. In some particularly competitive faculties the situation is even more serious: among medical students the incidence of depression is 2 to 5 times higher than in the general population. More and more universities are opening counseling services and psychological help desks. But, it is clear, that is not enough.
Camilla Pireddacoordinator of the University Union tried to explain the causes of this: “progressive deterioration of mental health”. First of all a constant “social pressure which imposes an increasingly performative model”. A “university system incapable of listening to and supporting those who experience difficulties during their own course of study, but rather subjects them to continuous stress, to ever-increasing expectations”.
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