Gina Smallwood always worried about whether her teenage son was wearing a seatbelt or having unprotected sex, but she was certainly never concerned about whether he was at high risk for depression.
After all, Kelvin Mikhail Smallwood-Jones was a dean’s list student with a 4.0 grade point average on a full academic scholarship to one of the most respected historically Black colleges in the country. Prior to enrolling in Atlanta’s Morehouse College in the fall of 2006, he was a football star and homecoming king at his Washington, D.C., area high school. A sophomore English major, Kelvin dabbled in photography and mentored at-risk youth in his free time. Last winter he was planning an elaborate birthday celebration and had been accepted into a prestigious summer internship program.
He never made it to either.
On Feb. 23, 2008 — less than two weeks before his 20th birthday — Kelvin shot himself in the head with his mother’s gun on the deck of the suburban Atlanta farmhouse that she bought to live closer to him while he was in college.
“Kelvin was an exceptional and amazing young man who had everything to live for,” says a teary-eyed Smallwood of her only child.
Kelvin’s story is not uncommon. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among American college students, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. In fact, a 2008 survey found that more than half of American college students have considered suicide at some point in their lives. The report is based on a University of Texas at Austin survey of 26,000 undergraduate and graduate students at 70 U.S. institutions. More than 5 percent of the students polled said they had attempted suicide.
