Suicide Prevention Amidst a Pandemic

The threats to our school community are nearly too numerous to count. Adults are reporting significantly high levels of stress, questioning how students with even less volition will be able to cope. Administrators are trying to staff buildings, students are worried about the virtual and hybrid instruction, and everybody is concerned for their health.

 

One NJ District faculty self-report of stress:

Stress Level                         Now                     Before Pandemic

Extremely High:                  15.3%                    5.1%

Very High:                           17.2%                   11.4%

High:                                    24.8%                  19.3%

Moderate:                            31.8%                  48.9%

Total:                                  89.1%                  84.7%

 

Nearly six months of isolation, limiting socializing, and restricted recreation have taken its toll. Fear, helplessness and despair are beyond what human beings aren’t meant to endure for prolonged periods of time and unfortunately, the threat hasn’t abated.

As with the above statistic, the 10% increase in those who are ‘extremely stressed’ represent the adults at highest risk, similar to the top echelon of students in this same category.

While most districts have reopened for some form of instruction, we are unsure whether to accept this living as normal or hold out hope for a restoration of familiarity. Without some sense of what to expect, we live in a state of agitation, or hypervigilance. Being ‘on guard’ erodes our resiliency and move the needle for more students and adults to be in the ‘at risk’ category.

Students with previous risk or threats of suicide, those students with existing mental health issues, newly identified students with mood disorders, those who have suffered a significant grief/loss in the past few months, those students who identify as gay/lesbian/bi-sexual and sexual identity confusion are all in higher risk categories.

In addition, those who are experiencing family turmoil, experiencing school problems, have an intimate partner problem or experienced some crisis in the past two weeks are at the highest risk. Thus, situational factors may mean a student who is not in one of the above categories can be at risk, due to the greater fragility of teens and pre-teens.

There isn’t a significant different in percentage for those who seriously considered suicide between 9th and 12th grade, nor is there between Black, White, or Hispanic youth, although females were quite a bit more likely. The months following a prolonged absence from school saw a rise in suicides with January and February being the worst.

Suicide rates for school aged children have been going up steadily since 2007, with the anticipation of an even greater spike this coming school year. Therefore, schools need to be prepared with a number of different prevention and intervention procedures, unified through a single paradigm. Replacing the old model of reactive hospitalizations, school personnel require advanced training in detection and intervention.

Faculty training critical components:

  1. A standard operating plan for intervention (including telehealth challenges)
  2. Understand how to create a stabilization plan
  3. Appreciate the critical areas for assessment of risk
  4. Curation of diverse external resources for levels of concern
  5. Recognize the potentially well-intended but harmful methods of support
  6. How SEL & mental health are linked for both prevention and intervention

 

Districts will have a difficult time making suicide prevention a priority when there are multiple imminent threats to contend with. In addition, the shared dis-ease of the faculty paired with social distancing, may mean impaired objectivity, or even caution around emotional investment. Physical security and emotional safety ought to be a close one and two this year so preventable casualties of this awful situation are not missed.

TeacherCoach will make suicide prevention training our first in a long series of webinars offered to our clients over the next nine months. For more information, please contact us at info@teachercoach.com.

 

 

 

 

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