·        Suicide is preventable and educators need to acknowledge that there are multiple factors that influence a student contemplating suicide, including risks associated with environmental, biological, and psychological.

·        Schools play an important role in identifying students who might be at risk or contemplating suicide.

·        Ways that schools can help promote mental well-being is prioritizing connections with and between students, integrating social and emotional curriculum, providing multiple resources for mental health, learning about the warning signs and risk factors for suicide, and creating clear protocols for how to handle these students.

·        We are unsure long-term what mental health can be directly attributed to the pandemic and online learning, but schools need to stay informed and stay on top of making connections with students so that they feel that they have someone that they can talk to at school.

·        The impact of a single suicide can have reaching negative effects for friends, family, classmates, and staff.

·        The concern is not that there is an increase of mental illnesses in school-aged teenagers, but the severity of the mental illnesses. 

·        Schools struggle with limited resources to help those with mental illnesses or contemplating suicide.

·        Teachers, principals, coaches, and other staff are key personnel to help prevent suicide with the connections that they make with students. By working together, they provide multiple outlets for a student to turn to when they are feeling that they need help.

·        This plan must create objectives for all student populations, including those who fall under special programs. 

·        The district improvement plan must include suicide prevention programs and include the notification procedure for parents and guardians of the suicidal students.

·        A school counselor, by this law, should aide in planning, implementing, and evaluating a guidance program for each student and to address their individual needs. 

·        This includes creating a guidance program for each student who is at risk of committing suicide.

·       The friends then relayed the information to the school counselor, who then in turn questioned the student on the statements, which she denied making them. 

·       The school counselor did not notify parents of this conversation. 

·       Although the school counselors were not found to be liable in this case, the court recognized that school counselors might hear of multiple suicidal ideas and not all might be true, but “the consequence of the risk is so great that even a relatively remote possibility of a suicide may be enough to establish duty” (Eisel vs. Board of Education of Montgomery County, 1991). 

·       In turn, this case taught us that there is a duty to warn parents, when the counselor feels as though the student could have the possibility of self-harm.

·        This training must be based on best practice-based techniques according to the Department of State Health Services, in coordination with the Texas Education Agency. 

·        This training is aimed at helping educators become aware and teach them how to handle working with suicidal students.

School counselors:

a. Inform parents/guardians and/or appropriate authorities when a student poses a serious and foreseeable risk of harm to self or others. When feasible, this is to be done after careful deliberation and consultation with other appropriate professionals. School counselors inform students of the school counselor’s legal and ethical obligations to report the concern to the appropriate authorities unless it is appropriate to withhold this information to protect the student (e.g. student might run away if he/she knows parents are being called). The consequence of the risk of not giving parents/guardians a chance to intervene on behalf of their child is too great. Even if the danger appears relatively remote, parents should be notified.

·        School counselors need to create, implement, and publicize strict and clear protocols on how to handle a student who is suicidal.

·        School counselors need to stay informed of all new laws that might be aimed towards working with suicidal students.

·        School counselors should stay up to date on the latest research and trends that are being seen nation-wide with suicidal students.

·        School counselors need to stay abreast on best practices for how to reach and connect with students contemplating suicide. 

·        School counselors need to assist in helping to identify students who might be at higher risk for suicide. 

·        School counselors need to keep an up-to-date list of resources that can be given to the families of the students who might be suicidal. 

·        School counselors need to continue to bring and pay attention to the issue of teenage suicide prevention in journals and conferences.