Two Hollidaysburg Area High School students concerned about teenage suicide within the school district - three high school students have taken their own lives since May 2009 - have turned to Facebook in hopes of finding solutions.
Steven Dodson, a 16-year-old junior, and Sarah Lipitz, a 15-year-old sophomore, created a group called "Hollidaysburg Senior High School Needs an Anti-Suicide Group" on the social networking site in hopes of gaining local support. They also linked it to an online petition.
As of Friday evening, the group had more than 650 members and the petition had 190 signees.
Dodson and Lipitz, along with a number of peers and Cindy Estep, a volunteer for the Blair County Suicide Task Force, plan to present their petition and desire for a suicide prevention program to the district's school board for discussion at its meeting Wednesday. If it is considered by the board, a vote will take place at its Aug. 18 meeting.
"A lot of people were talking about doing something, but nobody was really doing anything, so we decided to try and bring some attention to the subject," Dodson said. "It's been amazing how it has spread to so many people already, and we hope the school board will take that into account and hopefully they say yes to [forming a program]."
Estep, who has received training and certification in applied suicide intervention skills, crisis intervention, grief counseling and critical incident stress management, said she was told about the Facebook group and immediately decided to support the effort.
"I realized that when you have that many youth crying out for help we better do something," Estep, who lost her son to suicide 11 years ago, said. "I understand the school has measures in place, but hopefully they'll be willing to instill more."
The district currently has a student assistant team comprised of teachers, nurses, administrators, guidance counselors, counselors from Altoona Regional Health System Behavioral Health Systems and a drug and alcohol counselor when needed, district spokesperson Linda Russo said.
The team is available for kindergarten through 12th grade.
Counseling is also made available any time following a student death, whether it's a suicide or not and whether school is in session or not, Russo said, adding the number for confidential counseling is available all year on the school website's main page. Depression is also addressed in the district's health curriculum.
Altoona Area School District has an almost identical system, according to information provided by high school guidance counselor Drew Yingling.
"We have a lot of resources available for the students to do the best we can to prevent a crisis, but we're definitely always receptive to ideas from students," Russo said.
Estep plans to meet with Dodson, Lipitz and Ernie Podrasky - the access and utilization director of Altoona Regional Health System Behavioral Health Services - as well as various representatives from the Hollidaysburg area sometime this week to get organized.
"We want to meet mainly so the students can reveal what it is that their needs are and how those needs can be met," Estep said. "They have a good point so it's imperative that we do meet and discuss how we can better help them."
The meeting should be positive, Estep said, because it will get the main entities involved in the planning process.
Podrasky said a significant part of the meeting may deal with how to educate students on the services already available through the school district, but that there may also be room for improvement. He said he'd like to begin by listening to the students' concerns.
"We probably have one of the best student assistance programs in the state, but that's not to say there aren't things we can do to make it better," Podrasky said. "We always try to take a proactive approach, and if a problem comes up, we openly address it, and we're absolutely willing to do that with the kids in this case."
"It's very important for us to have professionals involved, because we are just students," Lipitz said. "We're very passionate about this, but we honestly don't know everything we would need to and having a professional to help us with this will mean a lot."
Hollidaysburg Area school board member Darlee Sill said he would be more than willing to discuss ideas for a suicide prevention program, and he thinks the other board members would feel the same.
"If we had a chance to be proactive, that's definitely something we should consider, because there's nothing worse than a young person taking their own life," Sill said. "If we can do anything to keep that from happening I think it certainly is worth any amount of work we would need to do to explore the options."
Mirror Staff Writer Scott Muska is at 946-7435.
