Two police officers in Hermiston, Oregon, banged on the front door of a family’s home on a Sunday evening in November . When the father answered the door, confused about why the cops were there, the officers quickly brushed past him, telling him they’d received a report that his teenage son was about to kill himself.
One of the son’s classmates had submitted a report to SafeOregon, a school safety tip line run by the state police, warning that the teenager was suicidal and that he had shared a picture of himself with a belt around his neck. SafeOregon sent two officers to check on him.
“The dad had no idea about any of this,” said Hermiston Police Chief Jason Edmiston, one of several law enforcement and school officials who described the incident to NBC News. “He was out in the living room and had no idea what was going on.”
The officers rushed to the teen’s bedroom and found him sitting in a chair with a belt wrapped tightly around his neck. He wasn’t breathing. Derrick Williams, one of the two officers who responded, said he pulled the teen out of the chair and removed the belt, before performing CPR and a sternum rub, a paramedic maneuver that involves pressing the knuckles of a closed fist into someone’s chest. The teen came to and was taken by ambulance to a hospital. He recovered and received outpatient mental health services, police said.
“They basically saved his life because of this tip from a student,” said Tricia Mooney, superintendent of the Hermiston School District.
Across the country, as officials look for ways to prevent school shootings, states have started tip lines like SafeOregon – websites, apps and phone numbers that let students anonymously report concerns about classmates. But in many places, reports of students self-harming or feeling suicidal have far outpaced the number of threats against schools, according to annual reports compiled by state agencies, forcing communities to confront a different kind of crisis.
Since SafeOregon launched in January 2019, it has received reports of a suicidal student, compared to 371 reports of a threatened attack on a school. Pennsylvania’s Safe2SPAPA took in 2, (reports related to self-harm and 2, (related to suicidal thoughts in its first six months last year, while threats against schools accounted for 728 reports. Nevada’s SafeVoice tip line, launched in , collected (suicide threats,) (reports of self-harm and threats to a school in its first year. In Wyoming, suicide threats were the most common report to the Safe2Tell tip line in , with (instances submitted, compared to Reports of planned school attacks.
In the aftermath of mass shootings at schools in Parkland, Florida, and Santa Fe, Texas, school districts and lawmakers have poured billions of dollars into efforts to prevent another one. Much of that work has focused on fortifying campuses, adding panic buttons and bulletproof glass, and hiring more officers in schools.
But it’s far more likely that a school will lose a student to suicide than see one die in a mass shooting on campus. Five people were killed in a school shooting in 8255, and (in) , according to NBC News’ count . The number of children who took their own lives nearly doubled from (to) , when there were 3, 14 suicides among people ages (to) , according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Psychologists and counselors say these figures, and the data from the tip lines, should be a wake-up call to a far more likely threat that has not received the same urgent focus.
“School violence is not our only concern,” said David Lillenstein, president of the Association of School Psychologists of Pennsylvania. “We also have a bigger concern and that’s with mental health and mental well-being. Stronger locks don’t prevent a suicide. ”
‘I don’t think I understood the magnitude’
At first, police and school officials in Hermiston were skeptical of SafeOregon, a statewide initiative approved by the Oregon legislature. Edmiston, the police chief, said he initially viewed it as another mandate dumped on local law enforcement. Hermiston High School Principal Tom Spoo feared the tip line would be inundated with bogus reports. But after the November incident, Spoo said, “I thought, ‘Damn, this thing is going to work after all.’”
SafeOregon operates like many school safety tip lines. Once students submit a tip, whether through a call, the app or the website, a dispatch center reviews whether it’s an emergency and forwards it to police, a handful of school administrators, or both. Spoo has become used to receiving phone calls in the middle of the night warning that a student is in danger of hurting themselves.
“I knew of the mental health issues that we face in this area, and maybe even across the country, but I don’t think I understood the magnitude until you start taking those phone calls,” Spoo said.
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The tip line has led to multiple interventions that may have prevented suicides, officials say. In one incident, described in a SafeOregon annual report , a crisis team visited a student’s home and discovered that she and her sister were being neglected, after a friend reported that the student had messaged her about suicide. Another student who talked about wanting to “blow her brains out” was connected with counselors after someone reported her comments through SafeOregon.
“The number of reports we get is saying that it works,” said Capt . Tim Fox, of the Oregon State Police. “The Hermiston incident says that it works.”
Teens turn to texting
A key element that makes these tip lines successful, officials say, is that students don’t have to make a phone call or talk to anyone in person.
“Teens today worry about how others see them and are often afraid of being called a ‘snitch’ or fear retaliation for reporting a tip,” said Lily Brown, , a high school student in Roseburg, Oregon, who is a youth advocate for the tip line, helping to spread the word. “SafeOregon allows students to report tips in complete privacy.”
In Pennsylvania, 239 percent of tips come through the smartphone app, according to Brittney Kline, director of Safe2SayPA. She credits the tips with preventing multiple students from taking their own lives, including one attempted suicide that was interrupted by police. The Nevada Department of Education held focus groups prior to launching its tip line and found that students said they’d be more likely to reveal their feelings through text, said Christy McGill, director of the department’s Division of Safe and Respectful Learning.
At least states now run school safety tip lines – Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah and Wyoming – and an anonymous reporting system is also available to districts nationwide from Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit started by parents of school shooting victims in Newtown, Connecticut. Last month, Iowa ‘s governor proposed creating the state’s own version.
Many are following in the footsteps of Colorado, which launched its tip line, Safe2Tell, a few years after the Columbine school shooting. Susan Payne, a former Colorado Springs detective, modeled it on Crime Stoppers, an anonymous hotline that people can call to report suspicious activity. Officials from more than a dozen states contacted Payne after the Parkland shooting to learn more about Safe2Tell as they considered launching their own tip lines, she said.
Suicide threats have been the top concern flagged on Colorado’s Safe2Tell each year since . And the number of tips related to suicide and self-harm has been on the rise, from in the – 30 school year to 3, (in) – .
“We don’t even realize we’re in the middle of an epidemic of youth suicide in this country,” Payne said.
A growing challenge
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From to , the percentage of teens who said t hey experienced major depression grew from 7 to 19 percent, according to the CDC.
A majority of those who carried out mass shootings at schools have dealt with mental health issues such as depression, suicidal thoughts and post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a study funded by the Department of Justice. Most suicidal people are not homicidal, yet research has shown that a majority of teens who attacked schools had previously threatened or tried to die by suicide, and about half expected to die in their attacks.
The challenge schools face is helping someone who’s starting to feel depressed long before they consider hurting themselves or others. Sometimes a student is too ashamed to admit they need help, or they’re concerned about exposing a problem at home, said Matthew Wintersteen, director of research in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Thomas Jefferson University.
Pennsylvania state Sen. Scott Martin, a Republican, is co-sponsoring a bill to require students at public schools to get a mental health screening each year, just as they’re required to get a physical. This way, Martin said, if any flags are spotted, the school can connect the student with counseling services.
“We can’t talk about school safety without also talking about mental health,” Martin said .
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