Florida School Toolkit for K-12 Educators to Prevent Suicide

student. I acknowledge this is a very sensitive issue and would approach it directly by stating to parents, I know that your child and his or her safety is very important to you as a parent. Do you have any ideas about how safety could be improved in your home? Your child has mentioned the availability of a gun in your home and I know that you probably have that gun for safety, but isn’t it possible that now that you’ve been notified that your child is suicidal that having the gun in your home makes it more unsafe? Counseling on access to lethal means training is available free at sprc.org . 35. Have there been any studies of suicide clusters that are from affected schools and communities? There have been a number of studies done by the CDC in recent years in Fairfax County, Virginia, and Palo Alto, California. Those studies have found the common factors in youth suicide clusters to be the following: untreated mental illness, extreme academic pressure, access to lethal weapons, substance abuse history, intimate partner violence, sleep deprivation, and LGBTQ issues, such as harassment.. Additionally, parents often did not recognize the warning signs of depression and see the need for mental health treatment for their child. 36. What can stop a suicide cluster? T here is no absolute answer, but a partnership is needed between schools and the community and it must include school and community leaders, law enforcement, parents, mental health and medical personnel, survivor groups, and the clergy. Several school districts that experienced youth suicide clusters implemented the following: suicide prevention information was provided for all school personnel, school mental health professionals received a daylong training in suicide assessment, the Signs of Suicide (SOS) depression screening program was implemented at the middle and high schools. Additionally, presentations about suicide prevention were provided for parents and suicide prevention information was posted on the district website. The school district also helped form the county youth suicide prevention coalition and suicide prevention became either a high priority for the school suicide prevention liaison or it became their sole duty as a new position was added. 37. Has the school system ever been sued for failing to provide best practices postvention procedures after a student suicide? Y es. I was involved on the side of the plaintiff in the case of Mares vs. the Shawnee Mission School District in Kansas, a case from 2007. Following the suicide death of a sophomore student, the school district provided absolutely no outreach to classmates, friends, or family. The student’s older brother was a senior at the same high school and, understandably, had great difficulty after the suicide of his sibling. Sadly, he also died by suicide a few months later. The school district settled the lawsuit brought by the parents, who argued that the failure to enact common sense, widely known suicide postvention procedures contributed significantly to second suicide of their children. The school district settled the case out of court with all details undisclosed. 38. How much is sleep deprivation connected to the problem of youth suicide? T here is a national concern that adolescents are not getting enough sleep and all the technology in their room interferes with their sleep. Many U.S. secondary schools start very early. The American Medical Association recommends that no high school should begin before 8:30 a.m. There are no easy answers to 159