Teen Life Counts -- A Suicide Prevention Program

A recent Surgeon General's report declared suicide as the eighth-leading cause of death, a serious national threat.  One of the recommendations for curbing this was education.  For over twenty years, JFS has been active in teen suicide prevention.

Teen Life Counts uses trained volunteers to teach a suicide prevention program in 45 area schools.  Each year, nearly 7000 students participate in TLC, and close to 700 of them are referred for counseling.

During TLC training students learn:

	To identify warning signs of depression suicide in their peers
	What to do when they suspect a friend may have suicidal thoughts
	How to handle their own feelings of suicide or depression

Teen Life Counts depends on volunteers.  Volunteers need to be comfortable speaking in front of a group, talking about the topic of suicide, and have good rapport with kids.  Training is provided twice a year to new volunteers.

Article from April 15, 2005 Baltimore Jewish Times (reprinted in part)

'Everybody Loved This Child’
A teenager’s suicide stuns the Owings Mills/Reisterstown community.

By Karen Buckelew, Staff Reporter, Baltimore Jewish Times

Two weeks ago, Stephen C. Katz seemed like a boy on the cusp of adulthood, with the world at his feet.

At 17, Stephen, a Franklin High senior, was preparing to graduate, with his pick of several universities at which to start in the fall. He was a lacrosse player at Franklin and for a club team outside of school, and he still found time to maintain good grades and ace his SATs.

He had a girlfriend, and more friends than anyone could count. He just returned from a spring break jaunt to Ocean City with his best friend, and was finishing his last few weeks of school.

On Wednesday, April 6, Stephen would have celebrated his 18th birthday. Instead, that day, his family and friends – hundreds of them, by most estimates – found themselves at Sol Levinson & Bros. funeral home, listening to a eulogy about Stephen.

Stephen, the boy who seemed to have it all, came home from school Monday, April 4, and shot himself to death in his Owings Mills bedroom. His mother, Debbie Katz, found him when she came home to change clothes after work. (Ms. Katz said a suicide note shed little light on Stephen’s action but expressed love for his friends and family.)

“This is a kid who really had the world at his fingertips,” Ms. Katz said earlier this week. “We all try to come up with answers and fit pieces of the puzzle together. But I just don’t know. I don’t know.”

No one seems to know. Nearly everyone in his life – young and old, teacher and classmate, boy and girl, Jewish and otherwise – seems not to have had any idea what was going on inside of Stephen’s handsome, dark-haired head. And now everyone is left to try to put together those pieces.

“His closest, dearest friends had no idea,” said Ms. Katz. “This kid was loved by everybody, and he turned to nobody.”

It’s not that Stephen was perfect, his mother said – like everyone else, he was not. He  had problems years ago in middle school, but seemed to have overcome them, she said….

Though Stephen appeared to be happy and healthy, something clearly was going on beneath the surface, said Ms. Katz. That, according to Joan Grayson Cohen, is not uncommon.

Ms. Cohen, Jewish Family Services’ manager of child and adolescent outreach, has worked as part of a crisis management team called to Owings Mills High School and the Jewish Community Center of Greater Baltimore after Stephen’s suicide.

“We talk about how sometimes, somebody doesn’t show you all their faces,” she said. “For kids who saw somebody who was very successful and obviously very connected to so many kids, [it is hard to understand] that there are things going on with people that sometimes we don’t see. Somebody is only showing you their good faces.”

She said she has been explaining the feelings Stephen’s friends will have after the tragedy – fear, anger, sadness, lack of appetite, anxiety, insomnia. Ms. Cohen has been emphasizing that for children mourning Stephen’s death – and for those feeling suicidal themselves – communication is critical.

“Kids need to talk to somebody about what’s going on with them,” she said. “When you don’t share those sides of you that are more troubled, that’s when there’s concern.”

Ms. Katz said she agrees. “Whatever it is that’s bothering you, talk. Find somebody to talk to, to [help you] deal with it.”

Learn to Be a Lifesaver

You Can Be a Lifesaver
Presenters needed to teach teen suicide prevention

Recognized around the state as the only comprehensive school-based teen suicide prevention program in Louisiana, Teen Life Counts (TLC) reaches nearly 7,000 high school students annually in 45 public, private, and parochial schools in the Greater New Orleans area.  The curriculum is designed to teach students how to recognize warning signs of depression and suicide and how to get help for troubled friends.

Twice a year, JFS offers a two-day training for school professionals and community volunteers on suicide prevention.  Volunteers must be 21 or older and need to be available during school hours to teach the curriculum. 

For more information or to register for the training, please call Ellie Wainer, TLC Coordinator, at 831-8475 or fill out the form below.