A new year of better mental health as suicide prevention efforts carry on

Barrington Unit District 220 and St. Charles Unit District 303 are both assessing the success of an entire academic year without any student taking his or her own life.

An event before the Barrington football game Friday night was intended to mark the occasion in an entirely celebratory mood. But the tone has been shaken by the grief and disappointment of news of a 17-year-old senior's death in the final week of summer vacation.

The two school districts last year tackled what seemed to be abnormally high suicide rates in past years with programs aimed at preventing such deaths and promoting mental health services. As they begin the new school year this week, they're continuing the programs.

"HERE in Barrington" is the communitywide coalition of students, parents, faculty and professional counselors set up to address the issue. The name stands for "Help, Encouragement, Resources, Education."

Its inaugural event last year was called "Stomp the Stigma," aimed at erasing any sense of embarrassment or shame about seeking the help of counseling.

The theme of Friday evening's HERE Fest 2010 outside Barrington High School was intended to be, "Last year we stomped the stigma, this year we're all here together," according to Deanna Griffin, a parent co-chairman of the coalition.

And the attitude of the group and community remains one of looking forward with what's been learned, members said. There was never any expectation that Barrington alone would be able to come up with the worldwide solution for teen suicide.

"My reaction is I'm frustrated that we can't talk about the ones that are saved," said the Rev. Mary Tudela, executive director of the Samaritan Counseling Center of the Northwest Suburbs in Barrington and a coalition member herself.

"I can say we saved some lives," she said.

Counseling services inside and outside the district said there's been a clearly positive impact from HERE in Barrington's efforts, though privacy issues prevented them from discussing individual cases.

"I think what's been really great is we have more parents calling about preventive measures," said Marni Johnson, special services department head at Barrington High School.

And students themselves, because of the training, know better about when to urge their peers to seek professional help - or simply to report an urgent need for intervention to adults, Johnson said.

Counselors have strongly advised kids against trying to counsel their peers themselves, and as a result the district has been seeing students seeking professional help much earlier than in the past.

"We don't want kids to be in crisis before they seek help," Johnson said.

Before last year, there had been four suicides in the district over the course of two school years.

In District 303, six students took their own lives over the course of seven school years before last year was suicide-free.

Superintendent Don Schlomann said the approach in his district has been different in some ways from District 220's. Federal grant money was allocated for the hiring of two people at each of District 303's high schools to specifically handle mental health issues for two years. Suicide prevention instructional resources are highlighted on the district's website.

But in terms of highlighting the issue with staff and student training, and a series of suicide prevention summits, the methods of both districts have had some similarities.

"We made it comfortable for teachers to talk about it with students," Schlomann said. "We're going to continue the training that we had and continue the staffing that we had."

One of the things teachers were trained in was to recognize the warning signs of suicide and depression. And when one teacher directly asked a student last year whether he was thinking about suicide, the student answered yes, Schlomann said.

While District 220 recognized no common links between its suicides, District 303 concluded that issues of bullying and inability to handle rejection played a part in some of theirs, Schlomann said.

A focus on bullying is going to be a part of this year's training programs, but the common denominator that can be of help in preventing all types of suicide is basic coping skills, Schlomann said. That will continue to be an emphasis.

"Our successes are built on small, incremental changes we can make in students' lives," he said.

Ann Haas, director of prevention projects for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, said both districts seem to be handling their responses to their "cluster" situations in a responsible manner.

"Certainly no suicide prevention program should be measured by entire eradication of the problem," she said.

Rather, the goal in communities like Barrington or St. Charles should be to get their suicide rate to the national level of 11.5 per 100,000 people or even the lower Illinois rate of 8.6 per 100,000 last reported in 2007, she said.

Illinois was ranked 46th in its number of suicides in 2007, and more urbanized states tend to do better than rural states due to greater availability of counseling services and the reduced stigma in seeking them out, Haas said.

The five states with the highest suicide rates in 2007 were Alaska, Montana, New Mexico, Wyoming and Nevada, according to foundation data.

Teen suicides are generally on the decline and have always been lower than those among the elderly, Haas said. The greatest increase in recent years has been among the middle-aged, and that is believed to be due in part to economic factors, she said.

Teen suicides have tended to receive the most public attention, however, because teens live in a more collective environment, and there's a belief that changes in that school environment can affect the rate, Haas said.