Suicide Prevention

What is Suicide Prevention?

Suicide prevention is the intentional steps that LCSD is taking to create school cultures where students build resiliency, develop positive coping skills, reach out for help with mental health, and talk about suicide in a safe and healthy way.

Training and Prevention Practices

Connectedness between students, staff, and community is important for decreasing isolation and building a support system that can reduce suicide risk. Building relationships is our priority in schools: welcoming students into classrooms each day, supporting their health and safety, using Positive Behavior and Intervention Supports (PBIS), and modeling positive interactions and coping strategies.

The Suicide Prevention content we use with students are age-appropriate materials that include the importance of safe and healthy choices and coping strategies focused on resiliency building.

For Students
For Staff

For Students

K-12 schools conduct the DESSA (Deveraux Student Strengths Assessment) a few times annually to screen students for eight key social and emotional competencies. The data assists the district in developing universal, Tier 1 instruction to meet students' needs.
Grades K-8 implement Character Strong curriculum, which addresses both social emotional learning and character development.
High school students learn from QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer) youth curriculum, which teaches signs of depression and suicide, understanding of attitudes and behaviors that can hinder help seeking, steps to seek help for self and others, and identifies crisis contacts at the school for immediate help.

For Staff

All school staff will be required to read LCSD's Suicide Prevention, Intervention, and Postvention Plan in its entirety.
All school staff are expected to be aware of the crisis team members in their school to access during a suicide intervention or emergency.
All school staff are expected to receive QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer) training by a certified district employee trainer or Linn County Health Services employee with a live instructor option or online training if staff cannot attend the in-person workshop. This training is designed for staff who interact with students who could disclose suicidal ideation to them.