Human Services reports spike in young people considering suicide

More children are contemplating and carrying out suicide than ever before, and the recent discovery of a suicide pact among school-aged kids in Clark County has left mental health professionals, teachers, parents, and loved ones scrambling to address the needs of the regions’ children. Taylor County Human Services reports that they’ve seen an influx of 15and 16-year-olds; 10 crisis intakes all in a row, all in that age range.

“They’re isolated incidents, but still connected,” said Taylor County clinical services coordinator Jen Meyer.

Schools and county agencies have been working to provide families and the community with education, both through inhouse programs and public events. In the Abbotsford School District, where the city and the schools have all endured heartache with the deaths of several beloved students in the last year, one of those to self-inflicted injuries, the staff isn’t taking this crisis lightly.

Their people services team is made of up two principals, the school nurse, school psychologist, the school resource officer and a health aide. They also employ two school counselors and a people services navigator who is bilingual with a background in social services.

“Two years ago we created that position,” said Abbotsford School District administrator Ryan Bargender of their people services navigator. “We needed someone who could help these families.” In addition to kids born in the area, he reported the school was seeing kids coming from other countries with a significant amount of trauma, and they designed that role to suit the needs of each individual child.

“It would be helpful if we could have four of them,” Bargender stated.

There are various other resources offered within the district, like Closegap, a messaging service that allows students to contact their school supports directly via text. This is especially useful for kids who struggle with face-to-face conversations and find texting to be less invasive. It also helps counselors prioritize their caseload which ensures that the children with the greatest needs are being addressed first in the day.

“I think we catch a lot of kids that way,” said Abbotsford Elementary School principal Abbey Frischmann.

And there’s CharacterStrong, a social and emotional curriculum offered in tiers to best suit the needs of students according to grade. CharacterStrong boasts curricula and trainings that improve behavior, increase safety and support mental health with the school engaging students in the program every Tuesday. The district also participates in Speak Up, Speak Out Wisconsin, a resource center that allows users to anonymously submit information about a student who is struggling.

In addition to a multitude of other services, three times each year the Abbotsford schools conduct surveys offered in several languages which are designed to take feedback directly from their students’ families, one of those being the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) put together by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to collect information that contributes to the leading causes of death and illness among young people. They use the information taken from these surveys to provide supportive programming in areas that students and their caregivers identify they need.

While they do employ those two school counselors who work hard to help the students, there are limitations to just how much these counselors, and the district, can do.

“I am not a therapist,” said Abbotsford Middle/High School principal Melissa Pilgrim. “I can get them to open up and share but I can't give them therapy, I can't prescribe meds, I can't walk you through DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy).”

Bargender said, “We need help from legislators, we need funding for mental health.” He reports that there just aren’t enough counselors to go around.

“It’s not enough,” Pilgrim echoed. Taylor County Human Services also offers a wide variety of services designed to help children in crisis, many of those bridging gaps that schools are unable to fill, like medication management or assistance with voluntary hospitalization. They also offer grant-funded and medicaidfunded programs, some of which can engage kids in nontraditional services like equine, music or art therapy and assist with skill development.

“A lot of those services are here in our backyard,” said Meyer. She looks forward to the opening of the youth program at the REC Center where she serves as the board president. Now part of the medicaidfunded Comprehensive Community Service (CCS) program, qualified kids may have the opportunity to take advantage of that safe space opening up this summer.

“If we don’t have them here, part of our crisis team’s job is to find them and link them with kids,” Taylor County crisis service facilitator Lori Walsh said of the resources available. Walsh and Meyer recognize that there are obstacles for those seeking assistance from the system. They agree with Bargender that there just aren’t enough counselors and therapists available for outpatient appointments, with Walsh reporting that she knows of families who have been stuck on waitlists for months. She stresses the importance of keeping those appointments even after you feel better to ensure that you have steady access to those professionals if you need them again.

In addition to waitlists and lack of providers, consumers and their families face the financial burden that can be a hurdle for many.

“Some can’t afford the gas or the medication,” Meyer said. “We’d rather them just reach out to see if there was something that we could do.”

“We’ve even given gas cards, we have to get really creative sometimes,” said Walsh.

Meyer states that their team is thinking outside the box and coming up with interesting solutions to get care to as many kids as possible. Bargender and the principals in Abbotsford can relate as they’ve even taken children to appointments when absolutely necessary. They also encourage their students’ loved ones to give them a call to see how they can help. No one believes that finances should keep children from accessing these services.

But perhaps the biggest barrier of all is the stigma that surrounds mental health. Why is it that people will go to the doctor for the flu or a fracture, but not for their mental well-being?

“Our brain is no different than a broken arm,” said Walsh.

“It’s okay to ask for help,” Frischmann said. “You wouldn’t hesitate if it was a physical ailment.”

That stigma exists for a variety of reasons; what were likely symptoms of mental health disorders were often treated with superstition and fear, a reaction that stayed fairly consistent until close to the 1950’s. Even today many people lack mental health education and those who suffer with symptoms may worry about being labeled or seen as unstable, which is further complicated by the way mental illness has been portrayed in the media.

Differences in cultural backgrounds could be a factor for some families who choose not to seek care. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), people in the hispanic community are often private and unwilling to air their dirty laundry in public, which can be exactly how it feels when you divulge your personal information to a stranger. NAMI reports that 35.1% of hispanic adults with mental illness receive treatment each year compared to the U.S. average of 46.2%.

Both Taylor County Human Services and the Abbotsford school district are committed to providing their community with education through seminars and events offered in both locations. But there’s just one problem.

People don’t show up. “We hold events throughout the year, but only a small group of parents came out at one time,” said Walsh.

“We’re finding people to come in, having them in for evening sessions, we put a lot of work into finding translators available, we have snacks, sometimes childcare,” Bargender said of their efforts to host events at times that parents and caregivers are able to attend. “We try to make it work.”

Bargender reports that they’re curating events and specifically inviting parents and families with children that the district has identified would benefit from the information, but the attendance for these functions is still too low. These professionals are coming from a place of concern rather than judgment; they know it’s because of the stereotypes surrounding mental health.

Walsh said, “Society overall is suffering, their mental health is not well, and our youth are falling right in line with that.”

Editor’s note: This is part two of a series of articles to bring awareness of the growing suicide and mental health crisis impacting communities in Wisconsin.