What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen

by Kate Fagan

According to the NCAA, suicide ranks as the third most frequent cause of death among student-athletes—behind accidents and cardiac failure.

college is supposedly about being cool and having fun, and admitting feelings of anxiety, sadness, and helplessness seems like the opposite.

Rates of depression and anxiety among college students are higher than ever.

From 1994 to 2012, the percentage of college students who sought help and were prescribed psychiatric medications rose from 9 percent (in 1994) to 17 percent (in 2000) to 20 percent (in 2003) to 25 percent (in 2006), a number that stabilized through 2012.

fully 50 percent of students rated their mental health below average or poor.

I think Penn students coined the phrase “Penn Face” to represent how everyone gives off a certain image of being okay, and having everything together, and almost, like, say, even though I’m stressed, I still have time to have a perfect social life, perfect grades, to join all these clubs, and I’m super successful. But in reality people are stressed, and do feel alone, and it’s important to address those things.

The counseling centers of many universities are staffed and funded at essentially the same level they were twenty years ago, before the rise in the number of students with mental health issues.

Comparing your everyday existence to someone else’s highlight reel is dangerous for both of you.

In person, time moves steadily past and you either keep the rhythm of the interaction or you don’t. Online, there is only the artificial rhythm you create, the beat slowed down or sped up depending on what you choose.

When you’re anxious and low, and out of habit (and addiction) you launch social media, it is unlikely that images of others will help you feel connected. Rather, they almost certainly further pry apart the space between you and everyone else, because you are not happy and everyone else seems to be.

a “dangerous gap could grow between this idealized ‘front stage’ you and the real ‘backstage’ you, leading to a feeling of disconnection and isolation.”

We communicate for many different reasons: sometimes merely to make plans, sometimes out of boredom or duty, and other times because we are struggling and need compassion and empathy. Most worrisome are the ways social media complicates or reduces our ability to reach one another when we’re in distress.

when we arrived at the topic of pressure, of perfectionism and quitting, all of them reacted the same way: knowingly. They had felt these pressures, to varying degrees. And they seemed hungry to be understood, and hungry to hear that many of their peers had felt the same way.

Too often, kids are herded into commitments and activities that are born not of passion but of obligation. These obligations can continue for years because stopping is not seen as a possibility. Those who do stop risk being perceived as lacking the intestinal fortitude to push through when the going gets tough.

All were concerned about image—not just their own, but also the image of their generation as one that pursues self-satisfaction and happiness supposedly with brazen disregard for anything else, including ideals of responsibility and the greater good.

The final quote on the page was from Anne Frank: “Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.”

If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are. —Montesquieu

We have translated expressions and emotions into emojis, and simply using an emoji seems to tell the recipient that all is okay. The inclusion of even one of those animated faces signals ease and lightness, regardless of what emotion the emoji represents, even if it represents crying. The acronym LOL rarely means laughing out loud—not literally laughing out loud, anyway. Very little of what we say in text is a literal representation of how we feel, what we’re doing, how we’re behaving.

Anticipation fuels optimism, at least temporarily. We tell ourselves that the current moment will not last forever, that the next moment will deliver us somewhere better. Of course, if that promise is repeatedly broken, if those next moments are never better, a kind of melancholy can set in: both our present and future seem tarnished.