College isn't always necessarily the best times of your life. It can be, if you make it.

If they make it? Fuck you for saying this.

But it's also very stressful. New environments, learning and grades, tests, new experiences, new people. You're in a constant state of unknowing, and for people with depression that can be really hard.

You're grossly understating the problem to the point of being untruthful. The problem isn't a "new environment"; the problem is a bad environment. At most universities no one gives a fuck about you. No one is going to go out of their way to make sure that you succeed. No one is going to lose any sleep if you fail. There are few or no incentives for anyone at the university to proactively advocate for your interests and you have no means of punishing the institution for not doing its job. In other words they're not going to help you and there's no reason for them to. That's the simple truth and pretending otherwise isn't going to help anyone.

There is a systemic issue at play here; our academic institutions are fundamentally dysfunctional, which is to say that they function in a manner that can only benefit a small minority of people. Obviously not everyone who is harmed by these institutions ends up killing themselves, but there are countless others who are harmed. And blaming the psychological make-up of the individual people who are least able to cope with this harm is only preventing the real issues from being addressed.

But many colleges have programs to help those students who suffer from depression. There's a lot of help out there, and you just have to reach out to get it. Reaching out is the first step, and that first step is always the hardest.

No, they really don't. At most places the only substantive help that's available is some extended time on tests and a slightly more lenient withdrawal policy. That's not a lot to someone who is fundamentally being harmed by their environment. Of course everyone should take advantage of whatever resources are available, but let's not pretend they're something they're not.

Don't give up just yet. Seek out other things in college, don't just wait for things to come to you. It might get better. After all, what do you have to lose?

Why is it that whenever one of you anti-suicide people performs these sorts of calculations the pain of living unhappily is never factored into the cost? What someone has to lose is reprieve from a fucking lifetime of suffering; that should be extremely obvious.