Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Kaylee Noyes
Mrs. Martin
Critical Discourse
19 December 2017
Proposal
According to The National Institute of Mental Health, 1 in 5 high school age students
will get diagnosed with a mental illness. The main goal of this proposal is to create awareness in
the high school, not only of mental health, but the resources out there to help people who need
it. At Platte County High School, many students feel that the administration do the bare
minimum on mental health awareness and suicide prevention. The 1 required day of suicide
prevention was made a joke of by students as well as staff. I would like to create a plan to set
aside a PLC day, to suicide prevention and mental health awareness. This day would be devoted
to making sure that students not only know that mental health disorders are totally okay to have,
but also that there are people you can talk to, who can actually help, unlike how the school says
Over the past 4 years of attending Platte County High School, I only ever remember
being given a suicide prevention curriculum this year. This could have just started this year, or I
could have been given a presentation 3 other years, and not remembered any of it. Why?
Because the presentations the school provides are the state minimum, they are not willing to put
in the money, nor the time to create a decent program that might actually help their students.
This is a real problem because having a school with students who dont know how to deal with
their mental health problems can lead to increased suicide rate. Suicide is a real problem in
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America, as well as the world and school is a big identifier if a student will have problems in
their life. How much of our happiness is fueled by societies validation of our choices? It seems
that the younger we are, the more dependent we are on making choices others will value and
praise --perhaps because we havent developed, or dont yet fully trust, our ability to name or
even know what makes us happy (Fagan, Kate. 191). Teens in high school nowadays are very
caring of how others see them and what other people think of them. This is awful on a growing
teenagers mind because theyll start to associate their sense of self-worth with likes on a picture,
but if those likes dont come, they get depression and start to rack their mind on what they did
wrong. Teens are so worried about what people think of them, it starts to take a deeper toll on
them, mentally. According to USA Today, There is a seasonality to suicide, said Dr. Gregory
Plemmons, the lead author on the study. If you look at adult data, most adults tend to commit
suicide in summer and the spring, we noticed that our biggest time (for children) was in the
fall. Relating to that statistic, kids are more likely to commit suicide during school season. This
is a dangerous statistic for schools because without a good backbone of suicide prevention, it
will let the more vulnerable students slip through. I want to create a day to help those students,
who are slipping through the cracks, dedicated to them, even if their problem isnt obvious to
their classmates. One study found that an average high school student today likely deals with
as much anxiety as did a psychiatric patient in the 1950s. (Fagan, Kate. 203). Theres no
wonder there is such an increased precedence of mental illness and suicidal rates. As seen in the
chart below, in the 15-24 age group, there were 5,941 suicides in 2015. Making suicide the 2nd
leading cause of death in that age group. In comparison, the age group 10-14, suicide is the 3rd
leading cause of death. These children are in middle school and their freshman year of high
school, and already feel like killing themselves is the only option for them. For them its too
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late, but for the students who have these feelings later, in high school years, we need to have a
After doing my inquiry research I realized how real mental illness really is and how you
truly never know who is suffering from what disorder. Mental illness is hard to understand
because you cant see it. If someone broke their leg, youd feel sorry because you can see it, but
if someone were to try to kill themselves you wouldnt feel sorry because you couldnt see the
underlying causes that made them do it. So going on this, I found myself in a cohort with 6
other people with the same overall topic. We came up with an idea of taking a PLC, and using
that to talk about mental health awareness and suicide prevention. The main portion of the day
would be to have someone come from one grade who suffers from a mental illness and have
them talk to the school. Wed definitely want to talk about the alternative medicine and ways to
cant go to the doctor and get help yourself. And then wed have a guest speaker from outside of
the school come and talk also. The main reason for this is, we want everyone to see that people
can overcome mental illness, and that suicide thoughts arent forever. Its a bad day not a bad
life, and nothing is worth losing your life over in the long run. On top of the speakers and
alternative medicine, wed incorporate places to go if you needed help as well as what to do if
your friend or loved one needed help. Wed be working to provide the students with
information and ways to help with depression and anxiety. We understand that everyone in high
school goes through something different and each thing affects us differently. As a collective
group, we are here to let everyone at Platte County High School know that it is socially
acceptable to feel these things and to ask for help. It doesnt matter who you are or what you
look like. We hope to provide help and real life encounters to let people grow and thrive on
their own.
According to the AFSP, The annual age-adjusted suicide rate is 13.26 per 100,000
individuals. and In 2015, adolescents and young adults aged 15 to 24 had a suicide rate of
12.5. The rate of suicide is way too high, there is no reason for 12.5% of high school aged
individuals to commit suicide, that is heartbreaking. Although, we as a cohort know that the
day were trying to make happen might be hard to sit through for some people, we want to
reiterate that it is okay to have a mental illness and we understand if people get angry and think
that this day isnt going to help anyone. According to the Parent Research Program, Each day
in our nation, there are an average of over 3,470 attempts by young people grades 9-12. If these
percentages are additionally applied to grades 7 & 8, the numbers would be higher. I want
restate that 3,470 teens are attempting to end their life every single day. These kids are the ones
that we hope this program will help and change the life of.
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Overall, we want to appeal to the students needs so the first PLC day we try this, wed
definitely do a randomized survey of how they thought the day went. When everyone had filled
out a survey, wed sit down and go over what needs to change and what needs to stay the same
to continue to have a good impact on the student body. Our slogan for this project is proactive
not reactive, the main purpose for this whole day isnt just to bash the schools program already
in use, but instead to actually change the lives of people. At the end of the day, no amount of
money can bring a child back from the dead, and if spending a little extra on suicide prevention
in school can help a child realize they do have people caring for them and that there is help out
there, its totally worth the extra cost and time out of a couple PLC days.
Works Cited
FAGAN, KATE. WHAT MADE MADDY RUN: the Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an
Merz, Thomas. PDF in HTML Pages. Web Publishing with Acrobat/PDF, 1998, pp. 145
173., doi:10.1007/978-3-642-72032-1_8.
Suicide. National Institute of Mental Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide/index.shtml.
suicide-statistics/.