Increasing demands on teachers may break down a critical link in the prevention of student suicides, experts say.
Two Prince William County students committed suicide last week, despite the school system’s extensive standards for connecting at-risk students with mental health professionals. This is the second year in a row that Prince William has lost two students to suicide in its fall semester.
Last spring, a student at Fairfax’s South Lakes High School committed suicide while facing expulsion for drug use; the winter before, a student at Montgomery Blair High School took his own life. Four school-aged District youths committed suicide in 2008, the most recent year for which data was available.
Even though these districts employ tiers of psychologists, social workers and counselors, teachers are “the link piece” to recognize suicidal students and get them into a specialist’s office, said Elana Premack Sandler, prevention specialist for the Suicide Prevention Resource Center.
But many teachers are frazzled by pay freezes and increasing class sizes: Montgomery’s budget was slashed by $97 million, driving class sizes up across grade levels, while budget cuts in Prince William and Fairfax froze teacher’s salaries, even for cost-of-living adjustments.
Steve Greenburg, president of the Fairfax County Federation of Teachers, said that “like with any normal human being, if a teacher is experiencing a tremendous amount of stress, it’ll have an impact on the children.”
Greenburg said he knew of teachers who had taken on second jobs and that stress-related incidents had increased among teachers.
Joan Rosenbaum Asarnow, director of the UCLA Youth Stress & Mood Program, said she is “a big believer in teachers” but that they have limits. “If you’re stressed, or you haven’t had any sleep because you have a second job, you could miss things,” she said.
David Clark, a professor of psychiatry at the Medical College of Wisconsin, said that “there’s a hope that just like kids get screened in the school for scoliosis and hearing and head lice,” teachers can be a “frontline” for suicide prevention.
“I wish they could, but we don’t fund our schools well enough for that,” Clark said.
Suicide is the third leading cause of death among youth aged 10 to 24, according to the Center for Disease Control. A nationwide survey of high school students found that 15 percent of students reported seriously considering suicide, 11 percent reported creating a plan, and 7 percent reported that they attempted suicide in the preceding year.
