Police, Under Pressure, to End Release of Data on Suicides

The University Police Department, under pressure from doctors at the Health Services and "some people in the faculties," will no longer release statistics on attempted and completed suicides at Harvard, David L. Gorski, Chief of Police, said yesterday.

One reason for discontinuing the release of the statistics, Gorski said, is that "we don't have complete data--the figures don't present an accurate portrayal of the situation."

You Can't Tell

Gorski explained that the UHS, for reasons of doctor-patient confidentiality, does not usually report attempted suicides to the police, which tends to make the statistics understate the true number of suicide attempts. At the same time, the figures may be inflated by the Police Department's practise of retaining for statistical purposes even those suicide calls later proved fake.

Robert C. Mudge, coordinator of records and communications at the Police University, said Wednesday that the police were also concerned about the effect on students' anxiety of publicizing the statistics, although he later claimed this was not the reason for the change. Gorski denied that this was a factor.

The statistics had been published in weekly crime reports since January 17. Before then they were available on request.

Among those urging the police to end publication was Archie C. Epps III, dean of students, who wrote a letter to Gorski on the subject.

Level of Anxiety

Epps said yesterday that he opposed publicizing the figures because they might raise the level of anxiety in the University community.

"The question of suicide is a medical and a personal one," Epps said, and should not be primarily in the jurisdiction of the police.

Dr. Paul A. Walters, head of the department of Psychiatry at UHS, also told Gorski he was opposed to the publication of the statistics on the grounds that suicide attempts should be kept confidential.

The two discussed the matter at length "some time ago," Walters said yesterday. Walters argued that because of the small number of suicides each year, mere reporting of raw data might lead to identification of the person involved.

There have been two suicides and seven suicide attempts since July 1, 1975, in the Harvard area, police figures show.

Personally, Gorski said that he has no strong feelings about the publication of the suicide figures.

"It's not going to get better by ignoring it. We need an awareness of the potentialities of suicide" that exist in many people, he said. But he added that he is not sure that advertising suicide figures would help solve the problem.