CPS alerts families to recent teen suicides
Cincinnati Public Schools confirmed Thursday the suicide deaths of two of its students since the first of the year.
The 34,000-student district is expanding its anti-suicide efforts to counter what educators, health officials and faith leaders are calling a crisis of Cincinnati-area teens attempting and successfully committing suicide.
“We have a community strategy and are involving all of our school social workers and counselors and will speak to all of our students in fifth through 12th grades,” district spokeswoman Janet Walsh said Thursday, even as a news conference and prayer service unfolded over the noon hour at Church of the Living God in Avondale.
A letter from schools Superintendent Mary Ronan was emailed to families and sent home with students Wednesday afternoon. In it, Ronan listed suicide-prevention resources available through Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
“We will use this time to remind students of help that is available if they feel overwhelmed with emotions, are troubled by recent events, or confused by rumors and postings spreading on social media,” Ronan wrote.
The district also sent home a two-page guide on how parents and guardians can talk about depression and suicide with children. The tips were developed by a national group of social workers.
“The right thing to do is, if you’re feeling stressed or getting (negative) messages and considering self-injury, talk to someone,” Walsh said.
In Avondale, at Church of the Living God, Pastor Ennis Tait gathered almost two dozen religious, education and crime-prevention leaders for a news conference and prayer service announcing a physical and spiritual attack on the “rash” and “evil” that would lead many teenagers and young people to contemplate and even attempt suicide.
Though Tait and other speakers said the current teen suicides and attempts are regional, they are focused on the city’s black community.
“This an act of violence that does not involve guns, drugs or gangs,” Tait said. “This is an inner enemy. This is a spiritual matter.”
A demonstrative prayer service, replete with swirling organ music, followed in the church. A small group then went to three Avondale schools – Rockdale Academy, South Avondale Elementary and Phoenix charter school – and prayed outside for the students inside.
Two teens have killed themselves in Cincinnati this year, according to the Hamilton County Coroner’s Office. The first, a 16-year-old boy from East Price Hill, died Jan. 26. On Sunday, a 12-year-old boy from Westwood died by an apparent suicide.
The coroner’s office released a statement Monday, stating the two deaths were not connected and are under investigation.
Only a coroner can rule anyone’s death a suicide, said Brigitte Boiano, of West Chester Township, the Southwest Ohio chapter chair of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
She said she knows of two additional youth suicides in Cincinnati since the first of the year and of several unsuccessful attempts by teens.
Teen suicide is most prevalent among white males and white females, said Boiano, whose 30-year-old son committed suicide in 2003. The rate of teen suicide in the black community is statistically lower, she said, but that discrepancy could be a matter of how cause-of-death data is reported.
“We only attend funerals as when requested,” she said. “We do not reach out unless someone contacts us directly. Our mission is to save lives, and also to provide comfort and resources to those that have survived a suicide loss.
“Suicide is a very personal and confidential trauma for most families. Most of these deaths are not publicly acknowledged and is usually found out by word of mouth.”
Boiano said she is meeting Wednesday with officials at Oyler School in Lower Price Hill, a pre-kindergarten to 12th-grade school in the Cincinnati district, to plan a suicide-prevention program.
Diva Dolls, a nonprofit focused on Greater Cincinnati youth, organized a Suicide Prevention Teen Summit at Celebrities banquet hall in Roselawn for March 6. The event’s website states it is sold out.
Shauntia Edwards, one of the organization’s six leaders, all working mothers, said she knows of four suicides by black teens – three males and one female – since Jan. 1. Edwards also referred to the social media “game” titled “Will they miss me when I’m gone?” as part of the problem locally.
“It’s very scary,” said Edwards, whose group has held community events for the past few years that have focused on bullying, HIV-AIDS and suicide. Last year, the bullying and AIDS event drew large crowds. The suicide-prevention program did not.
“People don’t want to talk about this, don’t want to think about teen depression,” she said. “We have to talk about this and face the reality of the problems our young people are facing.”
Suicide resources
Cincinnati Children’s Surviving the Teens/Suicide Prevention