Responding to what it calls an urgent public health problem, Santa Clara County has called in the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to do an epidemiological study to help bolster prevention measures against teen suicide.
The request comes after four Palo Alto youths took their own lives in 2014 and 2015, after six did in 2009 and 2010, mostly on Caltrain tracks.
A five-member team spearheaded by the CDC that specializes in suicide prevention will arrive Tuesday to meet with community leaders and doctors. The two-week visit follows up on three months of working with the Santa Clara County Public Health Department to collect data from 2008 through 2015 on suicidal behavior, both fatal and not, of young people throughout the county.
The assessment will survey the extent of the health problem and track trends, as well as identify risk and protective factors, in coming up with recommendations for prevention. The visit responds to a request that originated with Palo Alto leaders, channeled through state and county health officials.
“I really appreciate when we can have federal support and can leverage that expertise at a local level,” said Mary Gloner, executive director of Project Safety Net, a Palo Alto network stitching together a mental health plan central to the city’s teen-suicide prevention efforts.
Students and other community members have already taken numerous steps to support teens to discourage them from harming themselves. Schools are starting later so that students can get more sleep. Gunn High School students created a student support group. New fencing rims the Caltrain tracks. The school district and city have offered sessions on parenting and mental health issues. And counseling services have been expanded.
Palo Alto sought federal help after hearing of a CDC assessment, known as an Epi-Aid, concluded last year in Fairfax, Virginia, where 85 youths and young adults ages 10 through 24 killed themselves from September 2010 through October 2014. The county has a population of 1.1 million, compared with Santa Clara County’s 1.9 million people. In the five years through 2014, Santa Clara County averaged 20 deaths by suicide annually among youths and young adults up to age 24.
The CDC team, which includes members of the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, can provide expertise and conduct a quicker analysis than local officials alone. The team also will survey media coverage and review prevention efforts — but it won’t compile new data and will not survey social media, according to CDC spokeswoman Courtney Lenard.
Researchers hope to compare Palo Alto to other cities in Santa Clara County and possibly in neighboring counties as well.
In Fairfax County, Virginia, the study found that victims had multiple risk factors and that news stories of the deaths violated coverage recommendations of suicide-prevention specialists — thus potentially promoting suicidal behavior.
Among numerous risk factors the CDC’s Fairfax study listed were parents’ pressure for success, parental denial of children’s mental health issues, high counselor-to-student ratios at school, the occasional cruelty of social media and the stigma of mental illness.
Epi-Aid teams usually respond to infection disease outbreaks, said Dr. Sara Cody, Santa Clara County’s public health director, who formerly worked on such teams. It’s rare, she said, for them to address chronic health issues. The Epi-Aid team will issue a preliminary report shortly after its visit, then compile a more comprehensive report that is expected to be released several months from now.
Contact Sharon Noguchi at 408-271-3775. Follow her at Twitter.com/noguchionk12.
FACTS ON SUICIDE PREVENTION
For information on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention assessment team coming to Santa Clara County, go to www.cdc.gov/eis/downloads/epi-aid-fact-sheet.pdf.
For information on Project Safety Net and resources for parents and teens, go to www.psnpaloalto.com.
