Essex DA, mental health group hold suicide prevention program

SALEM – Educators from high schools all over Essex County Tuesday convened at the District Attorney’s office for educational training about the signs and prevention tactics of the third leading cause of death among adolescents in the U.S. – suicide.Screening for Mental Health collaborated with Essex District Attorney Jonathan W. Blodgett to host the Signs of Suicide prevention program, in which educators learned how to implement the SOS program, how to identify warning signs of suicide and depression, how to reduce suicide attempts and how to involve parents, school personnel and community-based organizations in the effort to prevent suicide.”This will help people to understand the signs,” Blodgett said. “What do you do when you see that someone who had been a seemingly happy student, was doing OK grade-wise, was involved in extra-curricular activities, now becoming sort of withdrawn, may not exhibit physical signs that they’re being abused but there is a change in their personality? That is the kind of thing that experts say you need to watch for, with somebody starting to fall down that dark road. The whole idea is to hopefully educate, alert and sensitize people to the signs of potential suicide victims. It is topical for a reason.”Suicides accounted for 1.4 percent of all deaths in the U.S. each year, but they make up 12 percent of all deaths among youths between the ages of 15 and 24. The suicides of 15-year-old South Hadley student Phoebe Prince and 11-year-old Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover in Springfield have caused students and parents to be hyper aware of the issues of bullying and adolescent suicide.”If you don’t sensitize and educate people at an early age – people who could be victims – and tell them you’ve got to speak up, you’ve got to go to somebody you trust, you have to tell someone if you think you are being bullied and you’re a victim. Don’t suffer in silence,” Blodgett said. “More importantly you have to make adults understand that this is not a right of passage. Adults have to understand that when kids are getting bullied there are going to be intended consequences – anything from severe depression to potential suicide to acting out themselves to becoming bullies.”Candice Porter of Screening for Mental Health led the program and encouraged educators to decide what they would do in a variety of scenarios after giving them the statistics about depression and suicide in regards to young people. She said that prevention programs are crucial in preventing tragedies.”The schools should be playing a role because if a student’s mental health issues or needs are directly impacting their learning then the schools need to step up in being in assistance,” Porter said. “Prevention is one of the first steps in being able to understand and treat mental health issues. It’s important to recognize that depression is a treatable illness like a physical illness. Treatment is beneficial and will alleviate the symptoms that someone is feeling.”Lisa Morin-Plante, the school nurse at St. Mary’s High School in Lynn, said she wanted to learn more about recognizing what could cause depression and what makes teens susceptible to suicide so that she knows what to look for.”I think that in any educational facility, for a child to be able to learn, they need to be able to know that they can come to an adult if they have a problem,” she said. “It’s hard for someone to come and be able to pay attention if they are worrying about the things that are happening to them.”Mona Blumstein, interim director of Student Support Services at Swampscott High School, agreed.”It is important for all the school systems to be aware of kids’ mental health and the impact on the way they perform in school and the way they interact with people,” she said. “I think schools have an obligation to provide support and programming that is going to help students within the community.”The program provides each school district with one high school and one middle school SO