By Clare Beezhold
News Editor
The Costa guidance counselors attended Manhattan Beach Middle Schools’s Signs of Suicide (SOS) Prevention Program implementation presenta- tion of “Time to Act” to help students on Nov. 5 after working on Costa’s SOS program for two years.
Costa sent counselors David Beck, Keshia Fields, Teby Wammack and Meg Graham to MBMS for counseling support, while MBMS administrative staff and counselors handled the presentation at the event. The day started with the educational film, “Time to Act,” for all seventh and eighth graders and continued with one-on-one counseling sessions with students in need, following a similar structure of the program here at Costa.
“I think it’s been an un- believable conversation starter for students in distress who are participating in self-harm and have contemplated suicide or who have friends who are in distress and don’t know what to do about it,” Costa Principal Dr. Ben Dale said. “So if you think about the two years that we’ve done this program, some great conversations have come out of it between students and counselors.”
According to Beck, a few years ago the state of California mandated there be a prevention program at the high school and middle school level to address the rising suicide rates. The programs need to include suicidal assessments, suicide prevention allies and other strategies to help students who are suffering from mental health issues.
“This is more where the push is coming from,” Beck said. “I know that from at least the counselors here at Costa, going back now seven or eight years, we started to notice an increase in the number of students that were dealing with stress or anxiety, and I think we noticed the trend ahead of us actually rolling out our own SOS program here.”
The event took place all day starting at 9 a.m. with a video presentation in each classroom ending at 10 a.m. The video contained information on how to get help for friends struggling with suicidal thoughts and for students struggling themselves. For these students, there was a follow up at the end of the school day with all of MBMS counseling staff, school psychologists and Costa counselors.
“I think it is always better to talk about it appropriately than not talk about it,” Dr. Dale said. “You can’t lose by having something research-based and appropriate guide your discussions, and I think that as adults we’re some- times hesitant or fearful of these conversations, so for me SOS provides a structured framework for the conversation.”
After the video presentation, students took similar assessments to those given on Costa’s campus. From there, the counseling staff brought all responses back and differentiated from highest risk to a lesser risk depending on certain aspects that were looked at as triggers.
“I think the main message is to say something if you are concerned for someone,” Beck said. “For those who are experiencing these things for themselves, it is that there are people that can support you and can help and care about you. In some cases, students do not have anyone to lean on.”
The SOS Prevention Program is a universal, school- based depression awareness and suicide prevention pro- gram made for middle school and high school students. The SOS program has five main goals that work toward pre- venting suicide and building community-based partner- ships to support students in their mental health struggles, Beck said.
“I think it was a really good and strong team approach,” Beck said. “We implemented identification, support and in some cases letting the students know that what their feeling is normal. We are normalizing the behavior of stress, anxiety and things of that nature.”
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