Increase in Students with Suicidal Thoughts Within the Past Year

Suicidal thoughts are a serious problem that is often concealed until it is too late to take action upon it. Until recently, Peninsula has dealt with very few students with thoughts of hurting themselves. Principal Mitzi Cress began to realize that more students had been coming to the counseling office for guidance. She then compared the number of students with suicidal thoughts in the past year with those of years before and saw that the number suddenly increased from four students per year to around 20 students per year. This drew a red flag for her and she began to put in a lot of time and effort by bringing new changes into the school year. Many changes have been made since then and new programs have been implemented, striving to help students struggling with these issues.

According to Cress, there are many factors that cause students to feel this way and it is specific to each person. Factors such as the struggle to do well in school, family complications and social media have caused students to sink into depression at faster and higher rates.

Cress believes that there is not one solution to this issue, but it requires a series of steps. Many new changes have been made this year to help students overcome these challenges. For example, the campus has recently been introduced to a therapeutic dog named Nia, individual counseling has been implemented, a new psychologist will be arriving in January and presentations and documentaries will be shown in school assemblies. Teachers have also been through thorough training in how to approach and recognize students who face these problems. Cress states that although there are many teachers who can recognize students who are going through rough times, there are also teachers who cannot and that is why it is important for teachers at Peninsula to receive this training through guest speakers and other methods.

“Right now, I am focusing on our staff and they have been going through a lot of training to recognize the illness, they have been going through mindfulness training, we have talked about meditation in yoga, we have had people coming in from college admissions that are in charge of the mental and health and wellness facilities of the colleges and telling us what they are saying,” Cress said.

Along with these drastic implementations, there are also small measures that students can take in their everyday lives to help others who are facing these problems. Small gestures such as asking another student questions about their week and offering help can impact them greatly.

“Just keeping in touch and and reaching that hand out, that really makes a difference,” Cress said. “We cannot solve every problem, but we need to work together and it comes with human connections.”

As a counselor before her occupation as a principle, Cress had dealt with students with thoughts of suicide and is passionate about helping them. She stresses on the fact that it is important for students to seek help when in tough times. Keeping their struggles to themselves will not eliminate thoughts of hurting oneself but only grow if action is not taken.

“Our goal is how can we help the students at Peninsula address when they have a bump in the road, gain the tools to manage it so that when they go off to college and they do not have that same support system of when you live at home, that they have the appropriate coping mechanisms to deal with it, to get over it,” Cress said. “That is why I always like to think of it as a cold or a broken arm. If you keep it to yourself and power through, it may grow into pneumonia or would you go to a doctor and see what you can do about it.”

The staff at Peninsula is striving to do all that they can to address this problem and are making beneficial decisions with the new implementations.

“I am feeling very optimistic that programs such as the art therapy will be amazing and the hope is that with this being a pilot now, we can ideally do other programs in the future and that way we are meeting more of the students’ needs,” Safe School counselor Christine Lopez said.