单选题
After their 20-year-old son hanged himself during
his winter break from the University of Arizona five years ago, Donna and Phil
Satow wondered what signs they had overlooked, and started asking other students
for answers. What grew from this soul searching was Ulifeline
(www. ulifeline, org), a website where students can get
answers to questions about depression by
logging on through their universities. The site has been
adopted as a resource by over 120 colleges, which can customize it with local
information, and over 1.3 million students have logged on with their college
ID's. "It's a very, solid website that raises awareness of
suicide, de-stigmatizes mental illness and encourages people to seek the help
they need," said Paul Grayson, the director of counseling services at New
York University, which started using the service nearly a year ago.
The main component of the website is the Self-E-Valuator, a
self-screening program developed by Duke University Medical Center that tests
students to determine whether they are at risk for depression, suicide
and disorders like anorexia and drug dependence. Besides helping students,
the service compiles anonymous student data, offering administrators an
important window onto the mental health of its campus. The site
provides university users with links to local mental health services, a catalog
of information on prescription drugs and side effects, and access to Go Ask
Alice, a vast archive developed by Columbia University with hundreds of
responses to anonymously posted inquiries from college students worldwide. For
students concerned about their friends, there is a section that describes
warning signs for suicidal behavior and depression. Yet it is
hard to determine how effective the service is. The anonymity of the
online service can even play out as a negative. "There is no substitute for
personal interaction(个人互动才能解决)", said Dr. Lanny Berman, executive director
of the American Association of Suicidology, based in Washington.
Ulifeline would be the first to say that its service is no replacement
for an actual therapist. "The purpose is to find out if there are signs of
depression and then direct people to the right places," said Ron Gibori,
executive director of Ulifeline. Mrs. Satow, who is still
involved with Ulifeline, called it "a knowledge base" that might have prevented
the death of her son, Jed. "If Jed's friends had known the signs of depression,
they might have seen something," she said.