Keeping schools free of tragedy
Luncheon offers suicide prevention programs to local educators
By Frank Johnson
On Oct. 9, 2006, Bullet East High School principal David Marshall was enjoying a typical high school tradition, the annual powder puff game. As he watched the action on the field, an employee came up to him and delivered some devastating news.
One of his students, a junior named Rachael Neblett, had taken her own life.
In the fall of 2006, Neblett had walked into Marshall’s office with a stack of papers — printed e-mails full of increasingly disturbing threats. He then took what he thought was the necessary action, setting up escorts for her as she moved about the campus, so the news of her suicide shocked him to the core.
“I felt my knees buckle. What did we do wrong?” Marshall said. “I thought we were taking the right steps.”
Tragically, the suicide was just the first in a string of three that rocked Marshall’s district for the next two years.
Marshall was one of two speakers at a luncheon for local education administrators and other health workers Thursday at First Christian Church emphasizing the need for effective suicide prevention programs to prevent stories like his.
With new legislation requiring schools to have suicide prevention awareness programs in place by fall 2010, the state Department for Behavioral Health, Developmental and Intellectual Disabilities is promoting an initiative called Signs of Suicide as an option. It offers free prevention toolkits to middle and high schools.
Statistics show the prevalence of suicide among youth is disturbingly high. According to the 2009 Kentucky Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 14.6 percent of Kentucky high school students seriously considered attempting suicide, 12.5 percent made a suicide plan and 8.8 percent actually tried. Middle school students are also affected, with 17.4 percent saying they have thought about killing themselves and 6.5 percent making the attempt.
Old Kentucky Home Middle School principal Ryan Clark was one of the many school leaders who attended. He said there have been no suicides in his six years at the institution but that the presentation stressed to him the importance of having a program in place.
“I feel pretty confident that we will be [implementing the Signs of Suicide] program,” he said.
The program teaches students how to identify the symptoms of depression and suicidality in themselves or their friends and encourages seeking help though the use of the Acknowledge, Care, Tell (ACT) techniques.
The luncheon used personal stories to convey the need for school districts to be properly prepared to prevent such tragedies or deal with them when they occur.
Marshall’s story continued six months after Neblett’s death with Kristin Settles, a student and friend of Neblett’s. A third suicide followed in the fall of 2007, this time a former Bullitt East Student who had transferred to another high school.
Marshall told the story of what his district had learned through these troubles, the measures and policies adopted and how eventually he realized that it was a problem facing not just his schools but also the whole state.
In general, Marshall recommended schools have a plan in place ahead of time, train their staff and train their students in suicide prevention techniques.
“Open up that awareness issue in your school. Students need to know it’s OK to say ‘I’m scared,’” he said.
The second speaker, youth suicide prevention coordinator Jan Ulrich, talked more specifically about the programs being offered the Kentucky Department for Behavior Health, Developmental and Intellectual Disabilities.
“I urge you to make sure your school is not one of these schools that does not have a plan for this,” she said.
In addition to the mandated programs, legislation in the senate also requires school staff to have two hours of training in suicide prevention. In addition to helping students, the Signs of Suicide program also trains teachers in a technique called QPR — how to ask the questions about suicide, persuade someone to get help and refer them to specific help.
As the luncheon winded down and Ulrich closed her speech, she flipped to the last slide of her PowerPoint. It showed a young male basketball player in a Western Kentucky University uniform. Standing on the sidelines, his face held an expression of jubiliation, perhaps cheering on his fellow teammates, with the words “What does suicide look like?” hovering above the picture.
Ulrich then explained that it was a picture of her son, who shot and killed himself during his sophomore year of college.
“I do this to show you how it happens,” she said. “He had begun to develop the signs of depression and suicidal thoughts, signs that I would miss, his friends would miss, his coaches would miss, that everyone would miss.”
Two weeks later, Ulrich became involved in the field of suicide prevention. She finished by asking the assembled educators and health workers to look closely at the information and practices provided by the Signs of Suicide initiative rather than just let it become “another piece of paper.”