NH School Suicide-Prevention Bills Move Through Legislature

There is renewed hope of offering comprehensive suicide prevention training in New Hampshire schools with several bills moving through the state legislature.

House Bill 652, which would require New Hampshire schools to provide staff at least two hours of suicide-prevention training each year, passed the House in a voice vote Wednesday and will move to the Senate. Senate Bill 282, which has 16 sponsors, expands the requirement to include coaches, school volunteers and students in suicide-prevention training, and is scheduled for a hearing on Tuesday. Bill 199, scheduled for a Senate hearing next week, also aims to increase awareness of signs of potentially suicidal behavior in schools.

“The takeaway is that there is strong support in the House, the Senate, and with the governor to get passed some type of bill,” said Ken Norton, Executive Director for National Alliance on Mental Illness New Hampshire.

If the House and Senate pass separate bills, the hope is that the two chambers will come together in conference to pass a compromise. The last attempt at such comprehensive legislation came in 2014.

“We test people’s ears and we test people’s eyes, but there is very little testing around people’s mental health and well-being," Norton said. "Parents rarely talk to their child about suicide, even though studies have shown that children talk among themselves about it a lot. This was a surprise to many, but not to us. Students converse with each other far more than adults when it comes to warning signs.”

According to the 2017 Centers for Disease Controls and Prevention At-Risk Youth Survey, 17.2 percent of all high school students – including 22.1 percent of female students – reported they had seriously considered attempting suicide in the past 12 months. The survey also revealed 13.1 percent of students said they had made a plan to commit suicide and 7.4 percent attempted it.

The survey also showed that 31.5 percent of all students – including 41.1 percent of female students – reported feeling “sad or hopeless” and stopped doing their daily activities for two weeks at a time, which Norton said is a leading sign of depression.

A 2014 survey of Granite State schools found that only seven percent of responding schools have annual suicide-prevention training, yet more than 75 percent said they wanted to provide the training, the Concord Monitor reported.

Norton said suicide is the second-leading cause of death among those ages 15-34, and stresses the need for anyone around teens to be aware of the warning signs of suicide.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255 and is monitored 24 hours a day.