School Officials Push Efforts to Stop Suicides by Teen-Agers

Prodded by reports that almost one teen-ager a day commits suicide in Los Angeles County, school officials are stepping up efforts to prevent teen-agers from taking their own lives.

Los Angeles school board members voted Monday to create a suicide prevention program at junior and senior high schools after learning that a student-body president at one high school killed herself earlier this month.

But parents and students in the West San Fernando Valley are starting such programs on their own.

Woodland Hills parents this week met with an expert on teen-age suicides to learn ways to recognize despair and head off tragedy.

And youngsters at Calabasas High School met Thursday with a psychologist to prepare to identify self-destructive classmates--like the freshman who fatally shot himself last year.

‘Saddened but Not Shocked’

“I don’t think kids are shocked at suicide anymore,” said 16-year-old Lisa Winston, one of 15 Calabasas High students being trained to help detect suicidal youngsters. “A freshman killed himself during the summer vacation. Another one tried to slit his wrists. It’s common enough that kids are saddened but not shocked.”

Michael L. Peck, director of the California Youth School Suicide Prevention Program, told 75 parents at Taft High School in Woodland Hills that suicidal teen-agers often give clues to their depression weeks or months before they attempt to kill themselves.

Those signals include loss of interest in previous activities, changes in sleeping and eating habits, inability to concentrate on school work, “pervasive sadness” and statements suggesting lack of confidence and poor self-image, Peck said.

“At many high schools, there’s one suicide a year,” he said.

3 Suicides

Taft High Principal Ronald M. Berz said no student from his campus has committed suicide this school year. But three teen-agers killed themselves during his recent 4 1/2-year tenure as principal of Sepulveda’s Monroe High School, he said.

“You never forget it when it happens,” Berz said. “The first feeling is shock and dismay. Guilt comes right after that first reaction: ‘What could we have done?’ ”

Berz said he hopes the new Los Angeles Unified School District anti-suicide program will train teachers and school workers to be sensitive to symptoms of depression. Taft High is visited by a school district psychologist two days a week and has eight campus counselors for its 3,000 students.

Los Angeles school administrators who will design the anti-suicide program said details have not been worked out. They predicted that the plan would involve using school employees to look for troubled students.

School board members voted 7 to 0 to start the program after learning of the suicide of the student body president at Bell High School. The program was proposed by Harbor-area school board member John Greenwood, who said two San Pedro teens had killed themselves in the past six months.

The deaths have left other students feeling guilty because “they didn’t know the warning signals. . . . They didn’t know what to do,” Greenwood said.

Los Angeles school officials do not keep statistics on students’ suicides. A 1979-80 study showed that 30 to 40 teen-agers in city schools took their lives during a 12-month period.

But the most recent county statistics show that about six teen-agers kill themselves weekly, said Barbara Price, a school district psychological services specialist.

Price, whose office in Reseda will design the anti-suicide program, said experts suspect that as many as 100 teen-agers attempt suicide for every one that succeeds. She said the school program may teach students, teachers and campus workers how to recognize suicidal tendencies.

A professional psychologist has begun teaching those warning signs to the 15 Calabasas High School students selected for an unusual peer-counseling and intervention program at the 1,320-pupil Las Virgenes Unified School District campus.

Unlike other peer-counseling projects, its youthful counselors are being specifically prepared to deal with suicidal classmates.

“This is a high-risk area for teen-agers,” said Laura Salter, a Woodland Hills marriage and family counselor who is setting up the Calabasas High program with Principal Robert Ross and psychology teacher Bruce Wilkoff. “This is an area of affluence and high achievement. The person here who doesn’t achieve will stand out like a sore thumb.”

Salter said such stress can lead to alienation, depression and suicidal feelings. She said she is braced for encounters with suicide-minded teen-agers. “I’m not looking forward to it, but it’s unrealistic to think it won’t be happening,” Salter said.

Calabasas’ youthful counselors were selected from 70 students who volunteered three months ago for the project. When they begin their campus work in about three weeks, they will have received about 12 hours of training.

The teen-age counselors said they will seek troubled classmates through routine, informal conversations on campus. If that doesn’t work, they said, they may wear identifying buttons or use posters to advertise their work. They will continue to meet weekly with Salter.

“There’s so much stress, so much competition for everything at this school,” said 11th-grade counselor Sheri Annis, 16. “We think it will be easier for people to talk with someone their own age, someone who is surrounded by the same problems.”

“I know to listen and not to try to substitute their feelings,” participant Jenifer Busching, 17, said. “I feel I’m strong enough to separate my own life from someone else’s problems.”