AND THEN YOU LEAVE LAKE WOEBEGON...:

Ms. Holleran was the third of six Penn students to commit suicide in a 13-month stretch, and the school is far from the only one to experience a so-called suicide cluster. This school year, Tulane lost four students and Appalachian State at least three -- the disappearance in September of a freshman, Anna M. Smith, led to an 11-day search before she was found in the North Carolina woods, hanging from a tree. Cornell faced six suicides in the 2009-10 academic year. In 2003-4, five New York University students leapt to their deaths.

Nationally, the suicide rate among 15- to 24-year-olds has increased modestly but steadily since 2007: from 9.6 deaths per 100,000 to 11.1, in 2013 (the latest year available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). But a survey of college counseling centers has found that more than half their clients have severe psychological problems, an increase of 13 percent in just two years. Anxiety and depression, in that order, are now the most common mental health diagnoses among college students, according to the Center for Collegiate Mental Health at Penn State.

Soon after Ms. Holleran's death, Penn formed a task force to examine mental health on campus. Its final report, issued earlier this year, encouraged the school to step up outreach efforts, expand counseling center hours, and designate a phone line so that anyone with concerns could find resources more easily. It also recognized a potentially life-threatening aspect of campus culture: Penn Face. An apothegm long used by students to describe the practice of acting happy and self-assured even when sad or stressed, Penn Face is so widely employed that it has showed up in skits performed during freshman orientation.

While the appellation is unique to Penn, the behavior is not. In 2003, Duke jolted academe with a report describing how its female students felt pressure to be "effortlessly perfect": smart, accomplished, fit, beautiful and popular, all without visible effort. At Stanford, it's called the Duck Syndrome. A duck appears to glide calmly across the water, while beneath the surface it frantically, relentlessly paddles.

"Nobody wants to be the one who is struggling while everyone else is doing great," said Kahaari Kenyatta, a Penn senior who once worked as an orientation counselor. "Despite whatever's going on -- if you're stressed, a bit depressed, if you're overwhelmed -- you want to put up this positive front."

Citing a "perception that one has to be perfect in every academic, cocurricular and social endeavor," the task force report described how students feel enormous pressure that "can manifest as demoralization, alienation or conditions like anxiety or depression."

William Alexander, director of Penn's counseling and psychological services, has watched a shift in how some young adults cope with challenges. "A small setback used to mean disappointment, or having that feeling of needing to try harder next time," he said. Now? "For some students, a mistake has incredible meaning."

Meeta Kumar, who has been counseling at Penn for 16 years, has noticed the same change. Getting a B can cause some students to fall apart, she said. "What you and I would call disappointments in life, to them feel like big failures."

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