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Mental health experts address suicide prevention in schools

Las Vegas Sun - 3/16/2021

Mar. 16—Kevin Hines screamed at the voices in his head and he cried on a bus on his way to the Golden Gate Bridge, where he planned to end his life.

He remembers wishing somebody would ask him if he needed help. Instead, he heard a passenger ask, "What the heck is wrong with this kid?"

Hines regretted the jump immediately as he fell 220 feet from the San Francisco bridge to the water.

He survived the fall in 2000, and today he's a suicide prevention activist.

"I'm here as a person to tell you don't learn the hard way like I did. And if you were to learn one thing from me in this session, and one thing alone, let it be this: never again silence your pain," he said during an online seminar Monday on the Clark County School District's website and Facebook page.

A number of mental health and education experts joined a panel to discuss suicide prevention.

Twenty-three students in the School District have died by suicide since March 2020, the youngest of whom was 8 years old.

Panelists said the problem has worsened with the pandemic and the isolation children have faced since March with school closures.

Mark Orr, father of recent high school graduate Anthony Orr, who died of suicide in August, also joined the discussion.

"As a parent, you have to provide, protect and teach. I didn't do that with Anthony, I guess. I didn't get the word across to him to go ahead and say, 'I need help'," Orr said.

The School Board recently approved a $761,000 contract for a mental health screening tool that is supposed to be rolled out to every school in the district.

"If my kids aren't well, how do they focus on education?" Superintendent Jesus Jara said.

Jhone Ebert, Superintendent of Public Instruction for the Nevada Department of Education, said there were 29 social workers in schools in the entire state of Nevada in 2015.

"Today, we have over 400 and millions of dollars going into those resources, but it's not enough," she said

Panelists agreed that people don't need any special training to reach out to someone at risk of suicide and try to help them.

"We don't need to be a therapist. We don't need to be an expert. We all have that power and ability to reach out to someone," School Board PresidentLinda Cavazos said.

The seminar was sponsored by the School District, the Nevada Department of Education, theNevada Division of Public and Behavioral Health, and advocacy groups, nonprofits and research institutions including Columbia Lighthouse Project, Hope Means Nevada, the Avery Burton Foundation and the Elaine P. Wynn and Family Foundation.

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