Civil trial over Penn suicide could shed light on a university’s responsibility for student mental health

A civil trial in the case of a former University of Pennsylvania student who died by suicide after the campus failed, her parents say, to adequately respond to her pleas for help started Tuesday in Philadelphia.

Ao “Olivia” Kong, a Central High School graduate, was a 21-year-old student at Wharton when she went to the SEPTA station at 40th and Market Streets on an early April morning in 2016 to end her life.

Her parents, Xianguo Kong and Zhao Lin, sued the university in 2018, alleging that in the days before her death, Penn officials, including a psychiatrist and counselors, were told at least nine times, including by Kong herself, that she was stressed and suicidal. But the school failed to notify her parents, get Kong hospitalized, or otherwise intervene, the suit said. .

» READ MORE: Parents of Penn suicide victim sue university

“She begged them for help,” her parents’ lawyer, Carol Nelson Shepherd, told the jury during opening statements. “Instead of recognizing this for the crisis that it was, they just shuffled her from person to person and place to place with no meaningful response to the seriousness and repetitiveness of her suicidal thoughts.”

Kong’s parents were in the courtroom as Shepherd showed the jury photos of her in happier days and finally an image of her at the train station that morning.

Penn has denied that it is culpable and said the university’s professionals made multiple efforts to help Kong, giving her counseling, support, and resources, available at all times.

“How does someone get to the point where they no longer want to live? The causes are deep and unknown and they are unknown here,” Penn’s lawyer Joe H. Tucker Jr. said in his opening statement. “No one is to blame.”

Kong, Penn said in court documents, experienced suicidal ideations before, during, and after the care the university provided, and just days before her death, was seen by two outside medical professionals who did not deem her in imminent danger, though she told one she was thinking of running in front of a train.

The civil case before Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Michael E. Erdos, could pull back the curtain on inner workings at the Ivy League university’s counseling center and address questions about just how much responsibility a university has for the mental health of its students — concerns that have become more prevalent in the years since the pandemic.

Kong’s death was among a number of high-profile student suicides at Penn, including the death of Madison Holleran in Philadelphia in 2014. From 2013 to 2019, there were at least 13 other student deaths by suicide. And in September 2019, Gregory Eells, the executive director of counseling and psychological services at Penn, died by suicide at a Center City Philadelphia building.

Penn also had been sued by the family of another student who died by suicide, Arya Singh, but that case was settled in 2017.

In the months following Eells’ death, Penn announced changes to the structure and oversight of its services, integrating its health and wellness programs, including its counseling and psychological services, into a new “health and wellness” unit under the provost’s office. The university also has hired more counselors and expanded the hours of its counseling center.

» READ MORE: Penn moves mental health and wellness programs under the direction of the provost

And in July 2018, the university appointed its first chief wellness officer, Benoit Dubé, an associate professor of clinical psychiatry, to oversee a new division of student wellness services with the goal of expanding capacity at its counseling center, including shortening the time between a consultation and the first appointment.

» READ MORE: Student suicides have shaken Rowan University

Those changes came amid scrutiny on college campuses around the country in the wake of student suicides and more demand for services. But then the pandemic hit in March 2020, forcing campuses to close, with many keeping instruction largely remote the following school year.

Kong was born in China and moved to Philadelphia with her parents when she was 9. In high school, she played on the tennis team, worked on the school newspaper, participated in the orchestra and drama club, and graduated with honors. She was accepted early decision to Wharton and given several grants and scholarships.

Halfway through the spring semester of her junior year, she became ill, according to the lawsuit. She went to the health center with a fever twice, the second time also complaining that she was stressed. She was treated for a respiratory infection, but her concerns about stress and lack of sleep were not addressed, the suit said.

On April 7, she contacted Penn’s counseling center, and over the course of the next several days would tell multiple people about the level of anxiety she felt, her fear of failing a class, and thoughts of suicide, according to the suit. She filled out a form at the counseling center saying she was having “current thoughts of suicide.” She even mentioned to one Penn employee that she would use sleeping pills and told a Penn psychiatrist, John Stein, that she intended to return to campus and “kill herself,” the suit said.

Shepherd, the parents’ attorney, said a Penn policy allows employees to breach confidentiality and tell parents if students are at risk of harm to themselves or others.

But Tucker, Penn’s lawyer, said that there is no way to reliably predict suicide and that 99.83% of young adults with suicidal ideation do not die by suicide.

Stein, the Penn psychiatrist, concluded that Kong was “sleepy and distracted” but not “psychotic,” according to the suit. As a consequence, he decided “that he could not involuntarily commit her or break confidentiality and speak with her parents,” the university said in court documents.

“It was his clinical judgment at that time that she would not harm herself,” Tucker said.

Shortly after midnight on April 11, Kong’s parents, though not aware of her pain, visited to check on her, the suit said. They had been in contact with her by phone and text messages more than 40 times that day, documents filed by Penn said.

Later that morning, just before her death, Kong could be seen on a SEPTA surveillance camera, pacing along the train platform in her pajamas.