Suicide Prevention Month opens with two dates: 988 Day on September 8, and World Suicide Prevention Day on September 10. For most of us the month raises a practical question. If a student were in crisis on a Tuesday afternoon in March, would the plan hold?
First, the number every adult and student should know. If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, any time. Free, confidential, 24/7. Reaching out works, and recovery is real.
What a prevention system looks like
Prevention works in layers: support for every student, extra help for students showing signs of struggle, and a planned response for students in crisis. Underneath all of it are relationships. School connectedness, including one trusted adult in the building, is among the strongest protective factors we have, and it is the layer that quietly erodes as caseloads climb.
- Universal wellness. Coping and help-seeking skills taught to every student, plus structures that put each kid in front of an adult who knows them. Here is the test: pick five students at random and ask who would notice if they stopped showing up.
- Staff training. Teachers, coaches, custodians, front office. Nobody is asking them to assess risk. They notice a change and hand it off, and that works when they know exactly who to hand it to.
- A referral pathway with a name on it. Same day, every time. Then the harder question: who covers it while you are testing, sitting in an IEP meeting, or across town at your other building. A pathway with one name has a hole in it.
- Risk assessment by someone trained to do it. Structured, documented, family looped in early. 97% of public schools offer some mental health service, and the barrier they name most often is staffing, at 55%. We are the staffing.
- Postvention, written before you need it. AFSP and the Suicide Prevention Resource Center give away After a Suicide: A Toolkit for Schools, and it beats anything any of us would write at eleven o’clock on the night it happens.
One more rarely makes the list. Re-entry. A student comes back after a hospitalization and someone has to decide who meets them at the door, what teachers get told, what happens to three weeks of missing work, and who checks in on day thirty. That usually lands on us, and it is usually not written down.
What South Carolina requires
The Jason Flatt Act (S.C. Code § 59-26-110) requires two hours of youth suicide awareness and prevention training for educators in a public middle or high school, completed before Professional certificate renewal. It counts toward the 120 renewal credits. The Department of Education’s renewal page lists the approved options, including district trainings, Signs Matter: Early Detection, and a Jason Foundation module.
Two things to notice. Elementary staff are not covered, though they see the youngest students in distress, and plenty of districts extend the training to them anyway. And two hours a cycle is a floor. A floor is a different thing from a building where staff know what to do this week.
Questions to ask in your building
- Could a worried teacher name the person they would tell, without looking it up?
- Who does risk assessment when you are out, and have they done one this year?
- Is the postvention plan current, and does the administrator who would lead it know where it is?
- What happens when a student comes back after a hospitalization?
Resources
- 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org.
- South Carolina Mobile Crisis, 1-833-364-2274, for in-person crisis response statewide.
- SC Department of Behavioral Health & Developmental Disabilities. Free printable flyers in English, Spanish and ASL, youth materials, and safe messaging guidance on its suicide prevention page.
- hope.connectsyou.org, an anonymous self-check that connects people with a counselor. Not an emergency service.
- NAMI’s Suicide Prevention Month hub, with a downloadable toolkit for staff rooms and family newsletters.
- NASP’s mental and behavioral health resources.
Keep the number close all year. If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 any time. That includes us. The people holding the plan for everyone else need one too.
Members: what does prevention look like in your district, and where are the gaps? Compare protocols, screening practices and postvention plans with colleagues in the SCASP member circles.
If you work with South Carolina students and aren’t a member yet, there’s a seat for you here. Join SCASP.