Introduction
Mental health struggles and suicides among adolescents present a rising concern for society. Many experts suggest that the rise of mental health issues, such as anxiety among teenagers, is connected with excessive social media use (Dastagir, 2020). On the other hand, experts connect increased teenage suicide rates with the negative effects of global warming and economic recession, creating conditions in which it is more difficult for young people to imagine their future (Dastagir, 2020). Furthermore, development processes in adolescence, such as puberty, impose significant changes in students’ bodies, causing dysfunction of reasoning and potentially threatening students’ safety. However, since schools are required to provide a comfortable and safe environment for students’ comprehensive development, schools should be concerned with the protection of students from self-harming and suicide. This essay will explore potential improvements in students’ suicide risk assessment and crisis interventions in the example of Orange County Public Schools.
Student Suicide Prevention Programs in Orange County Public Schools
Firstly, it is necessary to determine the role of schools in events connected with students’ suicide crises and define legal consequences for schools that fail to cope with student suicide prevention responsibilities. According to Underwood (2019), schools’ duties include taking action to provide a safe environment for students. Thus, the school’s actions can be perceived as deliberately indifferent to students if they do not receive proper support from a school counselor or other professionals, and parents can sue the school for wrongful death. Furthermore, in some cases explored by Underwood (2019), parents included federal claims of discrimination and civil rights violations in her article. Thus, schools are responsible for not informing parents about students’ conditions and neglecting the function of providing support to students. However, schools are not required to conduct regular suicide prevention training, which makes it difficult for school personnel to understand their role in teenage suicide prevention.
The Jason Flatt Foundation was named after a student from Tennessee who killed himself with a gunshot in 2000 at the age of sixteen (Miller, 2021). The Jason Flatt Act requires teachers to receive two hours of student suicide prevention staff development program regularly. The act was passed into law by California in 2008 (Assembly Bill No. 2246). Other states that did not accept the Jason Flatt Act use their own versions of annual suicide prevention training programs. According to Miller (2021), school personnel often does not fully acknowledge their role in suicide prevention, and there is a lack of clear policies focused on regulation and response to suicidal behavior in youth. Thus, while some laws and policies define the duties and responsibilities in suicide prevention for schools, there is a lack of a specific plan for handling cases of a student suicide crisis.
Furthermore, analyzing the recent case of student suicide in Windermere High School, a part of Orange County Public Schools, can provide significant information about how district schools handle student suicide. According to Freed (2020), Windermere High School experiences a lack of professional help due to the increased capacity of students. Thus, as part of Orange County Public Schools, Windermere High School provides students with the help of several school counselors. The students also receive assistance from a social worker based in the school, a psychologist, and a coordinator from Student Assistance and Family Empowerment (SAFE) Program (Freed, 2020). However, the school’s preventive efforts were limited by an inability to provide support to the number of students significantly exceeding the normal capacity. Therefore, as a response to the tragedy of student Jessica Freeman’s suicide, the school took the initiative to create a mental health club for students to provide additional support to students within available resources.
A closer look at the measures district schools make in preventing student suicides allowed identifying two primary key weaknesses. Firstly, the prevention program implemented in Windermere High School was missing the use of a suicide risk monitoring tool. According to Erbacher and Singer (2018), a suicide monitoring tool can predict students’ suicidal thoughts before they reach crisis levels. Thus, implementing a risk assessment tool can improve the efficiency and timing of intervention in the conditions of a shortage of professional help. Furthermore, the research conducted by Kodish et al. (2019) suggested that risk assessment procedures can often be perceived as intrusive and disciplinary to students, potentially causing additional discomfort and stress. In addition, the lack of influence on decision-making caused students to feel frustrated and hopeless (Kodish, 2019). Thus, the authors proposed the implementation of less intrusive risk-assessment practices such as self-reports and structured decision trees to assist professionals in identifying potential suicide threats (Kodish et al., 2019). Lastly, considering the potential improvement in crisis intervention measures, less frightening procedures during physical searches and student transportation to an ambulance can eliminate possible discrimination and marginalization of the student.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this essay defined several important points about student suicide prevention programs in schools. Firstly, the paper addressed the inconsistencies in schools’ responsibilities and requirements, where some schools work on establishing crisis handling plans while others do not acknowledge the role of staff training for suicide prevention. The paper also identified the main law focused on student suicide crisis handling and prevention. Furthermore, the paper covered the primary handling issues in suicide cases that occurred in Orange County Public Schools and proposed research-based practices for crisis handling and prevention, such as the implementation of risk assessment tools. The paper suggests using the non-intrusive and less frightening approach in intervention procedures to reduce students’ stress and eliminate discrimination.
References
Dastagir, A. E. (2020). More young people are dying by suicide, and experts aren’t sure why. USA Today. Web.
Erbacher, T. A., & Singer, J. B. (2018). Suicide risk monitoring: The missing piece in suicide risk assessment. Contemporary School Psychology, 22, 186–194. Web.
Freed, T. (2020). OCPS hosts a meeting after Windermere High student suicide. Orange Observer. Web.
Kodish, T., Kim, J. J., Le, K., Yu, S. H., Bear, L., & Lau, A. (2020). Multiple stakeholder perspectives on school-based responses to student suicide risk in a diverse public school district. School Mental Health, 12, 336–352. Web.
Miller, D. N. (2021). Child and adolescent suicidal behavior: School-based prevention, assessment, and intervention (2nd ed.). Guilford Publications.
Pupil suicide prevention policies, Assembly Bill No. 2246. (2016). Web.
Underwood, J. (2019). Under the Law: Student suicide and school liability. Phi Delta Kappan, 101(3), 64–65. Web.