New policies require educators to train for suicide prevention

About one in every 20 students in Middle Georgia's middle and high schools has attempted suicide in the past year, but recent state policies aim to shrink that number.

That number comes from the 2014-15 Georgia Student Health Survey, with more than 7,000 students who participated in the study in Bibb County alone.

"It's a big issue with what could happen," said Steve Corkery, executive director of the Bibb County school district's counseling department.

The most recent data for suicides that's available from the Center for Disease Control is from 2013, when five suicide deaths were recorded nationwide for every 100,000 people between the ages of 10 and 19. More recently, the Georgia Department of Education reported that, statewide, 9.3 percent of students had "seriously considered" suicide while 4.4 percent had actually tried to take their own life within the past year.

That's pretty consistent with data from Middle Georgia, specifically Bibb, Crawford, Houston, Jones, Monroe, Peach and Twiggs counties. On the Student Health Survey from the 2014-15 school year, at least 8 percent of students in each of those counties reported having considered suicide in the last year. In all but Monroe and Twiggs counties, at least 5 percent reported having attempted suicide.

Corkery said a lot of those attempts stem from students becoming convinced that death is the only resolution to the issues they're facing.

"A lot of it is kind of a telescopic kind of view of the world," he said.

To combat that, the state education department passed a policy last month that requires local school boards to adopt their own policies regarding the training of faculty and staff for suicide awareness.

A policy already is in place in Bibb County, and Houston County has one on the table for 30 days after it was initially proposed at the last school board meeting.

That comes in response to a state policy requiring that school districts train employees on prevention and handling of suicide. A similar effort is ongoing in Jones County, said high school counselor Kahadija Baker.

"I would say it's unfortunately common," Baker said. "We've had, in our county, three suicides in the last five years of students and one former student."

Members of Jones County High School's English department are frequently part of identifying potential at-risk students, she said.

"They get writings from students that are somewhat disturbing. ... They refer those students to us," Baker said, adding that those writing assigments sometimes include "dark" song lyrics. "We try to figure out what would make them write them."

One main goal of the prevention training is to heighten school employees' sensitivity to warning signs for a potential suicide risk. Among those signs are changes in mood, withdrawal from interactions and giving away possessions, Corkery said.

"Everybody in the school system really is responsible, and has eyes and ears on the situation," he said, noting that there's no predicting with which faculty or staff member a student might communicate. "Students will talk with anybody."

At least in Bibb County, most of the students surveyed had found such a person. When asked if they had an adult at school they could talk to, 45.5 percent responded they "strongly agree," while another 29.8 percent said they "somewhat agree."

The training also teaches about a "perfect storm" of factors that can lead to teen suicide attempts.

For instance, a student might experience a break-up with a first boyfriend or girlfriend on the same week that disagreements flare up at home.

"We know usually it is not just one stressor that leads to suicide," Corkery said.

In Bibb County, the most common response for the reason behind suicidal thoughts or attempts was "other," but "family reasons" was the most common after that.

Officials across the state are working to beef up prevention and intervention efforts to hopefully avoid having to deal with the "postvention" or grief counseling phase after a student commits suicide.

The proposed Houston County policy, which is expected to be up for a vote at the board's next meeting Dec. 8, calls for "all certified personnel" to receive annual training.

"Of course, we're concerned for all of our students, and we're putting things in place in our district to promote and help with prevention," said Kathy James, the district's student services coordinator.

This story was originally published November 20, 2015 at 10:34 PM with the headline "New policies require educators to train for suicide prevention ."