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Menlo Park City School District's suicide policy jibes with new state rules

Palo Alto Daily News - 6/14/2017

June 14--The Menlo Park City School District since 2014 has had a policy that lines up with new state rules on suicide prevention going into effect in the fall.

A state law (AB 2246) passed in 2016 mandates that public school districts serving seventh- to 12th-graders by the 2017-18 school year must adopt a policy addressing suicide prevention, intervention and postvention. According to 2014 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is the second-leading cause of death among Americans aged 10-24, and in the 12 months preceding a related CDC survey, 16 percent of high-schoolers reported seriously considering suicide.

The policy must provide training for teachers and address specific needs of high-risk students, such as LGBT youths. The policy must also be developed in tandem with school and community stakeholders, school-employed mental health professionals and suicide prevention experts.

"I would say we already had this in place," said Ginny Maiwald, the district's director of student services. "In terms of what we actually do on a day-to-day basis, there's no real adjustment."

Each of the K-8 district's five schools has a school psychologist and a counselor on site who have been through a variety of mental health training programs, Maiwald said. The district also provides training to some teachers and staff who can be quickly mobilized during a crisis. The district plans to increase its outreach to parents next year.

"I would say probably our biggest effort for next year is our communication with parents and helping parents understand their role in how to talk to their kids, having the emotional connection to their children and how to do that," Maiwald said.

Maiwald, after joining the district in the 2013-14 school year, worked with Superintendent Maurice Ghysels to establish a comprehensive health education program, which includes a part-time wellness coordinator to oversee the program. Prior to the program adopted in 2014, "staff didn't have an understanding of what (an involuntary psychiatric hold) was," Maiwald said.

Though the state doesn't require the policy to address students below seventh grade, Maiwald said counselors meet with classrooms of all grades to discuss mental health. The district, through a grant, next year will provide social-emotional wellness education for kids as young as 3 in its preschool, which will be expanded next year and offered to some low-income families for free.

Maiwald said research shows that 3-year-olds already know what they are feeling, even if they can't yet communicate it in words. The younger that kids are when they engage in social learning, the more normal it is for them to communicate feelings of stress before they become larger problems, she said.

"We know when children are younger that they tend to externalize their feelings more," she said. "That's why going way down into when toddlers first express themselves is so important."

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(c)2017 the Palo Alto Daily News (Menlo Park, Calif.)

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