As Ella King starts her junior year of high school, she’s hoping for more stability than the past two years have offered.

After the COVID-19 pandemic hit Nevada and triggered statewide shutdowns of businesses and public buildings, King finished the spring of eighth grade in lockdown. She then spent much of her first year as a Coronado High student learning in an all-virtual setting. After months of “school behind a screen,” she eventually transitioned to hybrid learning, with some days behind the screen and some in the classroom. Last year, she returned to campus for her sophomore year.

“The biggest challenge [was] coming back as a sophomore, because the expectations for sophomores are definitely higher,” she says. “There’s a higher class load. I [was] in harder classes and things like that.”

With academics to worry about, she says, she also didn’t have much guidance transitioning to in-person high school. “It still felt like I was a freshman,” King says. “I remember being lost for the first few days … [and it] was a very similar experience for a lot of my peers.”

King serves as co-chair on the Hope Means Nevada Teen Committee. Born from the pandemic and its associated mental-health challenges, the nonprofit aims to reduce youth suicides through peer support and by raising awareness via events and digital content.

Richard Egan, suicide prevention training and outreach facilitator for the Nevada Office of Suicide Prevention, has been monitoring state and national statistics for nearly a decade. He says Nevada has risen in the U.S. state rankings for rates of suicides in the 17-and-younger and 18-24 age groups. Based on data from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), he says the state went from nearly 25th to inside the nation’s top 20 for most suicides among the 17-and-younger age group, and is

12th in the nation among the 18-24 age group.

“[Suicides in] 18 to 24-year-olds substantially increased from 2019 to 2020,” Egan tells the Weekly. “Many took their lives just before or after graduation … Fifty-three took their lives in 2019, compared to 62 in 2020.”

During the 2020-2021 school year, at least 18 Clark County School District (CCSD) students died by suicide, according to the Las Vegas Sun, more than double the number from the previous academic year. For the 2021-2022 school year, the district is aware of seven student suicides, according to CCSD.

Since 2020, suicide is the third-leading cause of death for people ages 10-24, and the second-leading cause of death for those ages 10-14, according to the CDC.

Strategies

Asked whether her peers had the skills and tools they needed to seek help, King says no. “First, they don’t know who they can really talk to. And then I’ve noticed, some of them have maybe a hard time expressing what they’re feeling, and being able to communicate their feelings in a healthy way.”

She adds that staff and resources aren’t effective if students aren’t connected to them. She says increased training for teachers and administrators to recognize students’ mental-health issues should be prioritized as a strategy to prevent suicide.

“Students spend six hours of their day with their teachers, five days a week, a substantial amount of time,” King says. “If teachers can learn to recognize mental health signs or signs of depression or anxiety and things like that, they can try to reach out to the students. And maybe [can] point them in the direction of a counselor or someone that they can talk to in a safe space.

“Not every student has a parent or a trusted adult that they know, that they can talk to and feel safe.”

To that end, the district has moved to implement online training for students to learn “peer-to-peer” suicide prevention strategies. At a July 14 CCSD Board meeting, trustees approved use of a $174,800 School-Based Suicide Prevention Programming Grant from the Nevada Department of Education—for the purchase of online licenses for all middle and high schools to access the Signs of Suicide program.

The program teaches students how to identify signs of depression and suicide in themselves and peers, and how to respond: “Acknowledge, Care, Tell (ACT).” Student training will take place in health classes. Licensed staff will also have the opportunity to participate in a two-hour professional session about the Signs of Suicide program, according to CCSD board meeting documents.

CCSD Superintendent Jesus Jara tells the Weekly that working with higher education institutions to develop career pipelines for future mental health support staff is another “important” strategy to make up for a dearth in school psychologists, social workers and school counselors. At present, CCSD employs some 185 psychologists, 700 counselors and 195 social workers—nearly 1,100 employees to support approximately 305,000 students, a district spokesperson said.

The state board of education recommends one school psychologist per 500 students, one school counselor per 250 students and one social worker per 250 students. To meet that recommendation, the district would need to hire approximately 425 school psychologists, 520 school counselors and 1,025 social workers, based on student enrollment for the 2022-2023 school year.

In May, the district approved $175,000 funding for Nevada State College to support one licensed full-time employee, who will assist in developing school psychology, social work and school counseling pipeline programs such as dual credit, funded internships, clinical supervision and respecialization.

Staffing troubles

Alongside the trainings and staff pipeline programs, the state and CCSD have acknowledged the urgency of addressing the district’s long-standing shortage of school counselors and social workers. King says the only counselors she has encountered in school have been academic guidance counselors.

In 2020, the Nevada Board of Education adopted nonbinding recommendations for ratios of students to Specialized Instructional Support Personnel (SISP), which includes school counselors, school psychologists and social workers. In 2021, the state legislature passed a law requiring Clark and Washoe county school districts to develop and submit plans to improve that ratio.

Both counties’ ratios have fallen below the recommended targets in recent years. According to the state superintendent’s report, CCSD met 50% to 60% of the recommended number of school counselors in 2019 and 2020, respectively. The Washoe County School District—which has a student population of about 65,000, less than one-quarter of CCSD’s student body—met 70% to 75% of the recommendation in the same time frame.

The gap between the recommended figure and the number of actual employees was also smaller for Washoe County regarding school psychologists. CCSD met 25% to 29% of the recommendation for psychologists, whereas Washoe County met 35% to 38% of the recommendation. CCSD dropped from meeting 21% of the recommended number of social workers in 2019 to 16% in 2020; Washoe County’s staffing remained at 21% of the recommendation both years.

The strong legal recommendation for the state’s two largest school districts to improve student to SISP ratios was handed down with $7.5 million in state funding to hire 100 school-based mental health professionals throughout Nevada. The state Department of Education tells the Weekly that CCSD received more than half ($4,123,770) of that funding.

The district is also expected to benefit from recent federal funding—of nearly $1 million to hire 48 social workers, the Las Vegas Sun reported in March—in addition to pandemic recovery funds.

The 2022-2023 school year is the first in which Clark and Washoe school districts will have to develop plans for improving student-to-SISP ratios. The plans must be submitted to the department of education by October.

“CCSD has allocated over $20 million in American Rescue Plan and/or ESSER [Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief] funding to support student mental health,” CCSD tells the Weekly. “Some of those programs include in-person and virtual mental and behavioral health therapy and substance abuse counseling services, resources to help parents find mental health resources and technology that allows schools to provide student referrals for services.”

The district points to mental health care virtual services like CareSolace, which assists families in finding providers, and telehealth provider Hazel Health.

“During the 2021-22 school year, CCSD had 5,232 confirmed appointments through CareSolace in addition to 8,827 warm handoffs that connect families with care companions who help families navigate the insurance system to find the appropriate mental health care provider,” the district tells the Weekly. “Additionally, through the Panorama Education system, students completed more than 220,000 surveys. Utilizing that information, multidisciplinary leadership teams conducted more than 185,000 in-person wellness checks and provided nearly 80,000 referrals.”

Stress from social media

In addition to training teachers and staff to recognize signs of poor mental health, King says advocates should look at social media, one of the “biggest stressors” for students in middle and high school.

“With school, there comes academic stress and seeing other people. … With social media … what people are seeing is curated, created specifically … for other people to see,” she says. “Oftentimes, it’s very misleading as to people’s real lives, their real experiences.”

Egan, who facilitates educational trainings with the state Office of Suicide Prevention, concurs. He says since 2015, his department has been aware of a connection between social media use and teen mental health. The office is at work on a class about “internet influence on suicides over the past decade, and what have we learned,” which should be available to adults in September or October. “Social media use increase and in-person contact decrease is one reason for the suicide rate in youth and young adults,” Egan says. “The No. 1 resiliency factor for suicide is connectedness.”

King says the teen committee meets once a month to check in with one another. “We hear from mental health professionals, plan activities,” she says. “And anyone is welcome to join.”

Hope Means Nevada has 200 members in the Teen Committee, working in their schools and communities to help save lives.

Hillary Davis contributed to this story.

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