Penn’s head of counseling and psychological services dies by suicide at Center City building
The executive director of counseling and psychological services at the University of Pennsylvania jumped to his death Monday morning from the 17th floor of a Center City Philadelphia building, officials said.
Gregory Eells, 52, came to Penn six months ago to lead the department that counsels students with mental health problems. He had come from Cornell University, where he had worked for more than a decade and was an expert on resilience.
His death occurred about 6:40 a.m. along the 100 block of South Broad Street, where Eells had been living. It was ruled a suicide by the medical examiner’s office, said James Garrow, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health.
Eells’ mother, Jeanette Eells-Rich, said he had been down in recent months, saying the job was harder than he anticipated and had kept him from his wife and three children, who were still living in Ithaca, N.Y.
“I said, ‘Well, quit.’ His wife said the same thing,” Eells-Rich, 78, said in a phone interview from Salem, Ill., where she raised Eells and his younger brother. “We are confused. He was the most smiling, upbeat person I have met in my life.”
Penn declined to discuss the circumstances around Eells’ death.
In a message to students Monday, the university said only that Eells died suddenly.
“We extend our condolences to Dr. Eells’ family,” wrote Valarie Swain-Cade McCoullum, vice provost for university life, and Benoit Dube, chief wellness officer.
Penn in recent years has been rocked by a number of high profile student suicides, including the death of Madison Holleran, who jumped from a Center City parking garage in Philadelphia in 2014. There have been at least 14 student deaths by suicide since 2013. The parents of Olivia Kong, who killed herself in 2016, have sued Penn, alleging the university failed to help their daughter.
Eells took over as executive director of Penn’s counseling center in late March. He replaced Meeta Kumar, who had been leading the department following the departure of Bill Alexander.
“I have dedicated over 15 years of my professional career to providing mental health care to thousands of Cornell students through my work in CAPS,” Eells told Cornell’s student newspaper.
He had previously worked at the University of Southern Mississippi.
Eells has held a number of national posts, including president of the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors. He was elected to that position in 2007 and served for two years. He also had been chair of the Mental Health Section of the American College Health Association in 2014.
“Greg Eells will be a vital collaborator in our campuswide initiatives to sustain wellness across the University,” Penn Provost Wendell Pritchett said when Eells was hired. “In particular, his vision and experience will be invaluable as we continue to improve and integrate our services dedicated to student wellness.”
Police said no note was left.
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There was that story about a shrink who murdered his patient. Treating mentally ill people can be exasperating as Hollywood Rob’s shrink could attest.
Ever see The Prestige narrator Michael something. So the magician gets hold of Tesla Tech and uses it to do a magic trick requiring infinitely committing suicide to be cloned.
It is a bizarre ending. I wish Pangloss had Cliff notes.
Fascinating look at man’s ability to want fame and celebrity strongly enough to not only kill but to die in the process.
I have a 5 year old nephew estranged from my family due to abuse. I am the only member of the family his mom trusts and I live far enough out the kid can visit. Stop linking images you stumble across in old photo accounts. It is unethical and now that you are aware I am a private person not an Antiwhut organizer, you should stop it.
I am not a public figure
I value the kids’ privacy but am myself pretty much unembarassable and, glory be to God, untouchable. I wear a heavy armor.
Why would an idiot proclaiming a desire for conservative principles continue to prove again and again I am a big Bible thumping honky-tonk graduate of Podunk? I seriously asked my neighbors about antifa and they said “anti whut?”
Even if I wanted to I would not get six people unless I fed them. And while I was Valedictorian of all 32 of my classmates, I was also the daughter of the local WWII POW who came home from the war with a camera full of stories. So being smart did not help me.
Because I got my own camera and ain’t shut up since.
But . With. Kids. Around. And. A. Menace. Here.
I can shut up.
Huh?
At least he didn’t shoot 40 other people as his way of committing suicide. I saw a story today about some young mega-church pastor in California who killed himself. It made me think for a second that we might have been better off back when we (Christians, especially Catholics) thought that suicide was a sure ticket to eternal fire. It’s probably good (for the survivors) that they’ve lightened up on that. Some people just can’t take it anymore.
Obviously I blame the wife.
Some big old woman started ranting about how Hispanic women were sluts. Captain Larson (USA) leaned over towards me and said, tell her whenever there is a divorce, it’s the woman’s fault. I could call him Captain Pangloss but he was a great guy and deserves the recognition for being a man’s man.
70% of divorces are filed by women. Usually the reason is that they realize they accidentally married a man not a lesbian.
Damn Iska I have never unliked or disagreed with any of your post…
Every one is assuming he committed suicide. He left no note, no reason for jumping. He could have been pushed. Not enough information to make an informed judgement.
Thinking outside the box.
It is Philly, after all.
Doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in psychology’s current dogma of “resiliency”. Those clowns are always extrapolating preposterous conjectures from basic research and questionable research.
Cry Baby, that is a wild proposition, “extrapolating conjectures.” I like it.
3/4 of psychologists are women. Also, women are twice as likely a men to be on meds for mental illness. What could possibly go wrong?
You got me snickering.
Capt. FlyGuy: Such bombs are said to be 75% accurate, how many do you need to hit a target?
Capt. Flyguy: Two
He obviously was not an “expert” in being resilient.
No note? Maybe he had info on the Clintons, or Epstein, or DC pizza.
Hah, I was thinking the same thing. Was there any connection to Hillary, was he about to testify against the Clintons, did he like walnut sauce?
The majority of people who go into psychology-related fields have mental “issues” themselves. Credentialed acquaintances who work in these fields have acknowledged this… it’s not just my imagination.
I firmly believe that my best friend in college went into Psychology (after failing at computer science), because he was hoping to figure out what was wrong with him. I don’t think it ever helped.
Penn’s Head
So there’s one less college professor? I hope the school mounts a diving board off that building. I hope jumping professors are so prevalent they become a threat to pedestrians walking on sidewalks. I hope they out number pigeons on building ledges. Especially after just reading about that Mengele room at the Christ Hospital in Illinois where babies are left to die. Let the fuckers jump.
Without commenting directly on this weirdo, I’ll just say the DSM IV/V and a lot of mental health stuff is steamy, squishy shit, degrees and certification and titles mean nothing to me, and so yeah- these are the kinds of professionals “we depend on” until they take a swan dive or kidnap and rape your daughter.
Once again, another opportunity to recognize the clues right out in the open, (physiognomy) ignored completely.
When a person is that overweight, for example (75-100 lbs), shouldn’t someone ask the obvious question, “Hey Greg, what’s going on in your life, dude? Is there some kind of serious hormonal imbalance, or are you under some kind of tremendous, long-term emotional strain? You look really bad.”
But no. They have the effrontery- before his broken body has cooled- to go on about what a cracker jack psychologist he was.
“Greg Eells will be a vital collaborator in our campuswide initiatives to sustain wellness across the University,” Penn Provost Wendell Pritchett said when Eells was hired. “In particular, his vision and experience will be invaluable as we continue to improve and integrate our services dedicated to student wellness.”
Even his own mother was in complete denial-
“We are confused. He was the most smiling, upbeat person I have met in my life.”
So was Ted Bundy.
I’m confused because I can tell there’s something wrong just looking at a three inch photograph of the guy. And if this is how the most upbeat person she had ever met in her life came to his end, what does that say about her judgment?
At some point we are going to find the mean once again. We’ve tilted so far out of whack that the most obvious examples of broken humans are looked upon as healthy and normal while those who point out this gargantuan fraud are driven from the public sphere because muh feelings.
I absolutely hate making these kinds of posts because it makes me look like I’m heartless, but the truth is I feel sorry for these people. If someone, anyone had just been honest with this guy he wouldn’t be splattered across half a city block, he’d be physically fit and doing something appropriate for his skills, talents and interests, living with his family instead of apart from them, doing the kinds of upbeat, smiling stuff his mother is recalling in his obit. Imagine what kind of influence he had on emotionally troubled college students in the past several semesters of his decline. Penn better hope that there isn’t a class action lawsuit being put together as we speak to compensate all those poor souls who came into his sphere because the Human Resource drones pretended everything was A-OK.
Tragic story all around made worse because it was 100% avoidable.
HF, old lady Pangloss took us on a tour of the mental ward in Austin. She said that mental patients look sick. She was talking about those we were about to meet. I would add that your observation is valid, and backed up by the proverb: the EYES ARE THE MIRROR (MIRRORS) OF THE SOUL —
“A person’s thoughts can be ascertained by looking in his or her eyes. The proverb has been traced back in English to ‘Regiment of Life’ . But the proverb was known much earlier. Cicero (106-43 B.C.) is quoted as saying, ‘Ut imago est animi voltus sic indices oculi’ (The face is a picture of the mind as the eyes are its interpreter).
The L*tin proverbs, ‘Vultus est index animi’ or ‘Oculus animi index,’ are usually translated as ‘The face is the index of the mind.’ The French say, ‘Les yeux sont le miroir de l’dme (The eyes are the mirror of the soul). ‘The eyes are the window of the soul’ is a variant form of the proverb…” From “Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings” by Gregory Y. Titelman (Random House, New York, 1996)..
HF cuts through the veil.
He looks a bit homosexual. Internally civil-war torn.
I wonder if his patients had the same problems.
Reminds me of the time I went skiing in New Hampshire with some friends back in the 1970’s.
My friend Ron got hurt and I took him to the hospital for X-Rays.
A nurse that must have weighed so much that she was legally a place waddled out to tell me that his X-Rays showed no breaks and that he would be out in a few minutes.
I lit up a cigarette and she chastised me, “Don’t you know those things are bad for your health?”
I replied, “So is obesity.”
She went ballistic screaming about it being a glandular problem.
I let her go on for a few minutes until about exhausted her fat butt and couldn’t resist a final zinger,
“The tongue is not a gland. Stop eating…”
We were lucky to get out of there alive…
Perhaps he was from a protected class and he got points for the university for hiring him. Decades ago I took a job where I met a woman that just hired on as a jail deputy. Single mom, big chocolate problem (obese). She was a former probation officer so I guess she had that going for her on her background check. I thought she was a very lonely woman with low self esteem. I was proved correct when about two years later an inmate put the moves on her and convinced her he loved her. She proved his love for him by giving a cuff key to him for his buddy that was going to the big house for a life term. The lifer escaped out the van. She went to jail. I hope the sheriff’s department learned their lesson about hiring fat chicks.
Why would someone in mental trouble trust a fat fuck psychologist with man boobs? If you can’t take care of yourself, why would you be trusted to try and take care of others? Because it now accepted to be abnormal in any form whatsoever. It is killing this society.
Never trust guys with man boobs. Period.
I was recently in the emergency room, scratched my cornea. The doc who examined me must have been 1oo lbs. overweight. Maybe more. He wasn’t the first obese physician I’ve encountered either. Go to the ER, most of the personnel are overweight, some grossly so. Not sure why. Generally overeating, like drinking and other destructive behaviours is a result of overcompensating for feelings of inadequacy and insecurity.
Wonder what anti depressant he was taking
Everyone should listen to their mothers.
That old “takes one to know one” thingie.
No matter how shitty your profession, school, work, or other life is, if you can find happiness at home, with your family, and can set aside the misery of what you do, the likelihood of suicide is greatly reduced. Kids who find no love at home, no escape from the misery of the day, or see no light at the end of the tunnel, rarely wish to go on. Suicide is the ultimate exercise of self-ownership, but for someone who sees no other way out, it is seen as the only way. Drugs cannot undo life circumstances that sometimes simply need to change. Mental health care can help one “deal” with difficult situations, but sometimes real changes are needed too. Sad that he didn’t take his wife’s advice to simply quit. Sad that so many military volunteers don’t learn from the mass suicides of those who have served, and simply stay out. No easy answers, but doing the same thing over and over and thinking somethings actually going to magically change….isn’t the answer.
“There have been at least 14 student deaths by suicide since 2013. ” Must be something in the water a Penn.
What a bunch of fucking “men’s men” we got on this thread! Talking shit about someone recently departed never having walked a mile in his shoes, and
professed Christians to boot!
Fucking douchebags!
Plato Retardus again. You got man boobs asshole? Give Darwin a chance!
Iluvco2
Haha! Don’t worry man! Everything you’ve ever accomplished you did on your own! You da MAN! A regular Chuck Norris Billy Badass.
Probably wear white sunglasses and drive a raised Chevy, divorced a couple o times and a deadbeat dad.
See how that works. The only difference is your still alive unlike the guy your talking shit about.
What a maroon
Ah, no, fucking no, but everything I’ve got I did on my own with the help of myself and real friends. Wear prescription costa del mars, drive a tacoma, been married 34 years to a wonderful wife who puts up with me and is a true partner, and have two sons in college who love my ass. Decisions have consequences, just live with those decisions and don’t drag me down with your fat ass man boobs, asshole. Why go all SJW on this site MAN! Not the place. Pathetic. Oh, but you are a fucking “truth seeker”, right, FUCK YOU!!
You cant make this shit up. Leftist put the psych help facility in a tall building. Leftist hire leftist and he cant deal with the issues of the poor leftist bastards so he jumps from the leftist psych building. This will encourage his leftist patients to seek the same end as if their counselor could not handle it surely they too cannot. Hmmmm maybe I will just sit back and gather more popcorn and let this play out all on its own and not have to lift a finger to save this here Republic after all. Hmmmmm
We are prisoners of our own minds and the wardens of our own insanity. What we think and feel is often unreal so it is necessary to go beyond the algorithms of the mind. This is a sadly ironic story and of course I feel for his family. Always remember that life has no particular meaning. We bring the meaning to it. Having a good life is a work of art and we are always the sculptors of our lives in each and every moment.