http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2016/02/21/teens-experts-say-ohio-schools-should-teach-suicide-prevention.html
This article lays out real life experiences of a young Columbus, OH suburb student and the impact of suicide on her life. And with this impact and the knowledge of suicide education, there is a push in Ohio to have suicide prevention and mental health support in the school systems. It is the hope of state and local leaders that education and prevention programs will allow for suicide and mental health programs to lessen the stigma of these issues and help people speak about their concerns. This is the push in the primary, middle, and high schools, but recently the governor has required public colleges and universities to provide suicide prevention education, which I believe is a step in the right direction.
I have found the statistics in this article to be astounding. Having 8 percent of high school students having attempted suicide in the past year is very concerning. That level is awful to me. The fact that there are 8 in 100 kids who have attempted means that in an average high school there could be upwards of 60-80 kids who have attempted suicide in just one year. And this is those who have attempted, but survived. This not only concerns me on a professional level, but a personal level as well.
Having had a friend in high school that committed suicide, this truly hits close to home. I know that schools need to work on mental health and suicide prevention, but this also goes into the community, churches, homes, and other organizations that they take mental health seriously and know the warning signs of self-harm and suicidal ideation that children are having.
Is this something we can fix over night? Of course not. But I do truly believe that if we as a society can prevent even one student from committing suicide and get the mental health help that they need, that we have been successful.
I think that more suicide prevention programs would be beneficial. Even if it was just a program to help students make goals and put in place purpose for their every day lives with a segment on suicide prevention, it would be beneficial. I went to a private school and I had never heard of suicide prevention. When one of our classmates committed suicide, the teachers had to come up with their own ways to help us cope with it. Many of them let us skip class and the art teacher even let us create a giant board for people to write notes and draw pictures. I feel like it was a lot of stress and sudden pressure on the school staff to help the students. Having something in place ahead of time may have made it less chaotic and stressful.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great article! We just implemented Signs of Suicide (SOS), a prevention program through Children's Hospital to our eighth grader's at Canal. The SOS program is designed for middle and high school students, and is great to teach students more about how to identify depression and suicide risk factors, warning signs, and protective factors in themselves and their peers. I feel this program really works to reduce the stigma in the school environment by getting staff involved and teaching students to acknowledge, care, and tell (ACT).
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