District 303 starts school year with focus on suicide prevention

This is the year St. Charles Unit District 303 hopes to break a grim trend in its student population.

"The truth of the matter is, about once a year, one of our students commits suicide," Superintendent Don Schlomann said in an address to teachers Friday.

The district gathered its teachers and support staff from the middle schools through high schools for a primer on how to spot students in danger of taking their lives and ending the pattern. Dr. Peter M. Gutierrez, from the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine, told the teachers they should never fear bringing up the topic of suicide with students, especially those showing warning signs.

"I guarantee you, you will not put an idea in their head that wasn't there to begin with," Gutierrez said. "Suicide is just a word. Ask your kids about suicide. Say, 'Are you thinking about killing yourself?' "

Any conversations, writings or drawings about guilt, suicide or death, or sudden changes in personality, behavior, eating or sleeping patterns or classroom performance are all possible indications that the student is contemplating suicide in the near future, Gutierrez said.

Once a warning sign is spotted, the student should be approached and questioned directly about suicide. Any mention of suicide by the student at that point, even if it doesn't seem they really mean to actually go through with it, should result in the student being taken directly to counseling at that moment, Gutierrez said.

"If they are talking about suicide, you need to take it seriously," he said. "They may not be really going to do it, but you don't want to be that person who makes that assumption."

The district is adding two new counselors this year, one at each high school, who will concentrate specifically on the local suicide problem.