Health statistics offered

At least 10 school-age children in Alleghany attempted suicide during the last year; six of those were eighth grade or younger.

Meanwhile, there were 100 local pupils referred for attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADD/ADHD), 66 for asthma and 44 regarding substance abuse.

Those were a few of the statistics included in the school health nursing survey and program summary end-of-year report for Alleghany County Schools (ACS) for 2002-03.

The report, released by ACS last month, includes data provided by several different personnel, including school nurse Paula Tayson and school guidance counselors. Brenda Sutherland, the school system's personnel/student services director, provides overall supervision for the school health program.

Suicide

The report indicated there were one attempted suicide among elementary-age pupils (kindergarten through fifth grades), six in middle school grades (sixth through eighth) and three among high school students (ninth through 12th). None resulted in death.

Of the 10 attempts, two — the one by an elementary pupil and one by a high school student — occurred at school.

"We've had the highest, or nearly the highest, suicide rate in the state in Alleghany for years," said Superintendent Duane Davis. As to why, he said, "That's the big question. We've come up with a lot of possibilities, but we can't point to one or two things as, this is what causes it."

Davis noted that adolescence is a particularly volatile time. "They take things seriously and don't have the life experience to put things in perspective."

He said school personnel prepare for those situations. "We work real hard on training all our staff members on how to handle that in the best way possible. It's a serious thing."

Similarly, Linda Wishon, guidance counselor for fourth through eighth grades at Sparta School, said suicide threats or signals are always taken seriously.

She said such indications can range from a pupil giving things away or making relatively vague statements such as "I don't think I'll be here tomorrow" or "Nobody cares if I live or die," or giving away belongings, to a child ingesting pills or specifically threatening to harm himself or herself.

Children feeling the pain of their parents' economic problems can be a factor, Wishon said, and children can have poor coping mechanisms. "They don't feel like, ‘I'm going to be gone forever;' they feel like, ‘It's a way out of my pain.'"

The schools have a suicide prevention team, teachers trained in suicide prevention management, she said. That team assesses a threat as low, medium or high.

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