OPINION: Bridging the Gap: Expanding Suicide Prevention Efforts from Higher Ed to K-12
By: Ayaan Moledina
As a current high school student, I know that conversations about mental health and suicide prevention just aren’t had in educational environments. From stigma to the lack of education on these topics, there is a severe lack of awareness among students about these issues that affect their everyday lives or what resources are available to them. Seldom do schools actually educate students about their mental health, and when they rarely do, it is very surface level, not covering the deep-rooted issues, causes, and solutions. I say this from personal experience and from knowing policies and experiences across the country.
An example of this stigma would be me being told by our school mental health professional not to use the word “suicide” when talking about mental health because it’s not relevant to everyone, only to a certain number of people.
Despite this stigma and the need for more conversations to be had in K-12, especially since suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death for individuals 10-14 and 15-24, we often talk solely about improvements at the higher education level and K-12 institutions are underrepresented in these conversations. While I think dire changes are needed in institutions of higher education (IHE) as well, and that's why I am a part of the Coalition for Student Wellbeing, I think we need to pair those efforts up with advocacy at the K-12 level. I know that K-12 and collegiate are vastly different but I still believe that many changes that are being advocated for can be made applicable at both levels.
An example of efforts that can be made in tandem would be the addition of contact information for the 988 Lifeline and other resources such as Crisis Text Line, onto the back of student ID cards. For the past several Congressional sessions, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) and Rep. Lou Correa (D-CA) have introduced bipartisan legislation that would require IHEs to include these resources on the back of student IDs and this bill has successfully made it through the U.S. Senate in the 116th and 117th Congresses. However, there has never been any federal efforts to support this type of push at the K-12 level. After seeing this lack of support for my age group, I decided to write a bill myself that would institute the same requirement for middle and high schools receiving federal funding.
In states that had already implemented these proposals at the K-12 level, we saw the effectiveness among younger age groups, with these states seeing an average increase of 36% in calls to 988, demonstrating a decreased risk for suicide and more awareness of available resources. This led us to understand the need for these policies to be enacted for K-12 schools as well. We knew that the higher education version of the bill had received extensive bipartisan support from various organizations and members of Congress and therefore, we sought to bring that same support down to the K-12 level.
After seeing this implemented in my home state of Texas, I saw the increase in awareness among my peers about 988. Before advertising this information, nearly anyone in my school knew about 988. After enactment, students would walk through the halls and I would actually hear them talking about 988 and how good it was that the school was pushing out these resources. ID cards are a part of our daily lives - we always have them with us. Whether scanning in for the day or buying lunch, this is a constant reminder that this is a resource we have in our back pockets, in the case that we ever need it. Given the limited resources and budgets that schools have, this is a cost-effective way to ensure suicide prevention is prioritized in educational environments, with every state that has implemented this ruling that it can be handled with existing funds allocated to districts.
I have continued my advocacy over the past several months, engaging more and more young people from diverse backgrounds and experiences, partnering with some of the largest suicide prevention and mental health organizations in the country, and successfully working to garner bipartisan support among members of Congress. Awareness of 988 is little among the general population and even among legislators - so much so that once they learn about this bill, an overwhelming majority of them want to support it because of how effective the solution is and at little to no fiscal cost.
As a high school student, I have seen firsthand the need for more conversations in schools about mental health and the need to provide resources to young people who may not know where to go in moments of need. This bill is just one example of a cost-effective and simple way of how we can use higher education efforts as a springboard for more lifesaving efforts at the K-12 level as well. Instead of just focusing on one or the other, we need to harness the power of both levels and see how we can work together to make changes for all students, ultimately saving lives.
Ayaan Moledina is a sophomore at St. Stephen’s Episcopal School in Austin, Texas and is a member of the Council on Student Wellbeing.