Tony Walker is senior vice president of academic programs at The Jed Foundation, a national nonprofit that works to protect emotional health and prevent suicide among teens and young adults. David Schuler is executive director of AASA, The School Superintendents Association.
Every administrator is aware of the critical need to rapidly scale up our ability to adequately support student mental health in our nation’s schools. School leaders are stepping up to meet this need, which requires a comprehensive and districtwide approach combining expert support, best practices and data-driven guidance to help students thrive.
Without this support, the picture is concerning: The U.S. surgeon general issued an urgent public health advisory in 2021 for immediate awareness and action in protecting youth mental health nationwide. Surveys show that younger people are reporting higher levels of loneliness. Persistent sadness and hopelessness in high school students rose by 50% between 2011 and 2021, according to a CDC report.
Suicides across the country hit an all-time high in 2022 and remain the second leading cause of death among people ages 12 to 24.
In July, researchers at the the National Institutes of Health found that suicide rates among preteens — those ages 8-12 — have increased approximately 8% annually since 2008. The increases were most pronounced among female preteens, American Indian/Alaska Native or Asian/Pacific Islander preteens, and Hispanic preteens. Black preteens had the highest overall suicide rate, while Hispanic preteens had the highest increase in suicide rate.
A 2020 national study by The Jed Foundation found that 60% of parents reported their child recently experienced mental or emotional challenges, including social isolation or loneliness, anxiety, depression or suicidal thoughts. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that in 2021 more than half of female high school students reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, a 58% increase from 10 years prior.
To identify factors that can have a positive impact on student mental health, The Jed Foundation and AASA, The School Superintendents Association, in 2023 launched a multi-year initiative to develop and deploy a comprehensive approach to mental health and suicide prevention for pre-K-12 school districts called the District Comprehensive Approach, or DCA. This collaboration exemplifies the significance school district leaders are placing on their students’ emotional health.
Earlier this year, The Jed Foundation and AASA welcomed 15 school districts from 14 states to join the inaugural DCA cohort, which is aimed at helping 480 schools improve systems of support for more than 356,000 students.
The approach encompasses recommendations school and district leadership can use in collaboration with school staff for strategic planning across seven areas:
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Develop life skills. Helping students strengthen fundamental life skills and social-emotional learning is one of the most powerful ways to build resilience and protect mental health — and thus reduce suicide risk. Social-emotional learning also promotes learning readiness, school engagement, and academic achievement. Culturally responsive social-emotional learning, when integrated across school programming, improves student health and well-being.
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Promote social connectedness and a positive school climate and culture. Teens who feel connected to others, cared for, and a sense of belonging in their school community are less likely to experience emotional distress or suicidal ideation, and are less likely to engage in substance misuse or suicide attempts. Schools are a powerful place for teens to experience social connectedness.
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Encourage help-seeking behaviors. Adolescents report that they’re more willing to seek help if they have support and encouragement for doing so, know and trust their health care providers, and are able to openly express their emotions to those they trust. Schools should engage in a variety of culturally responsive mental health promotion activities that remove barriers and build pathways for help-seeking to promote mental health and reduce suicide risk.
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Improve recognition and response to signs of distress and risk. The majority of young people who die by suicide are struggling with untreated mental health challenges. It is imperative that school communities include early recognition of these challenges through gatekeeper approaches and properly planned and implemented screenings. Those who interact with students the most are in the best position to recognize signs of distress and suicide risk, and gatekeeper approaches prepare school staff, faculty, administration, students and family members to recognize and respond to signals that teens are struggling.
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Ensure student access to effective mental health treatment. Schools are well-positioned to provide students with, or facilitate access to, effective supports and psychotherapeutic treatments that increase health and well-being, prevent and treat depression, substance misuse, and other behavioral health disorders, and reduce suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Efforts that encourage students to seek help also will reduce stigma and increase the likelihood of students engaging in mental health services.
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Establish and follow crisis management procedures. Systematic processes for supporting students identified as potentially suicidal are critical to a comprehensive prevention approach. Comprehensive crisis management procedures should include plans for responding to incidents impacting safety and mental health in schools, such as the death of a student or member of the school community, threats of violence or experience of violence at school, or natural disasters.
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Promote means safety. Reducing access to lethal and dangerous objects or situations that can be used to cause self-harm is called “lethal means safety.” It’s a powerful component of comprehensive suicide prevention. Annual scans of school environments can promote safety by reducing student access to potentially lethal chemicals, medications, unsecured ropes, rooftops and towers. When a youth has been identified as being at risk for suicide, lethal means counseling for family members about safety and security measures at home is a critical component of effective suicide risk reduction.
Applying each of these domains to interventions, programs and services in school districts can help create communities of care that equip educators with resources needed to identify struggling students, connect them to support and ultimately ensure safe school environments.
It is time for us to prioritize the mental health of our nation’s youth, and schools are uniquely positioned to do so. Students, educators and district leaders need support to succeed.
By addressing mental health disparities in our schools and creating communities of care, we can help change lives and improve the future of not only our country’s public education system, but the entire nation.
