Oxford University faces flak over student suicides

Oxford University, one of the world's best-known varsities, is under fire after alleged undue academic pressure on students led to two suicides within months at the same college, a media report said.
Two students at Oxford University's Balliol College committed suicide within three months of each other leading to a student-led campaign to persuade the university to ease academic pressures and change the way it deals with youngsters suffering from depression and anxiety.
Andrew Kirkman, a 20-year-old second-year physics and philosophy student at the college, killed himself within days of being told that he should take two terms of medical leave, 'The Sunday Times' reported.

Kirkman, a state-school-educated pupil from northwest London, who scored straight A and A+ grades, was suffering from depression, which left him struggling to keep up with his academic work.
His family say he had told university officials of his problems.
The university said he had discussed health issues with staff but had never mentioned feelings of suicide and that he had agreed with the suggestion of going on medical leave.

The newspaper has learnt that three months after Kirkman's death in December 2013, Jennifer Xu, a first-year philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) student at Balliol, also committed suicide.
Xu, a former pupil of the leading girls' school North London Collegiate, was also on medical leave from Oxford at the time of her death in March last year.

Taken to hospital after the attempt to end her life, she did not survive.
The Oxford University Student Union has launched a campaign to create a charter for colleges to guarantee "support and respect" for students with mental health problems.
It includes a demand that students on medical leave are not required to pass tests with high marks before they can resume their degrees.
The number of students accessing counselling services at the university has shot up by 136 per cent since 2003-4, with 1,070 undergraduates using the service in 2013-14, up from 453 in 2003-4.