It’s National Suicide Prevention Week and one way to gauge how students view the topic is through the Iowa Youth Survey.

Greene County School District Special Needs Counselor Kyle Kinne says the Iowa Youth Survey is a state assessment given to 6th, 8th and 11th graders every other year. There are over 280 questions that deal with several topics, one of which is on suicide. Kinne says the most recent data showed that 32-percent of Greene County 11th graders felt so sad in the last 12 months that they stopped the things they normally did. As for those 11th graders that had serious thoughts about committing suicide, it was 18-percent. Fourteen-percent of 11th graders made suicidal plans and six-percent tried to kill themselves. 

“Six-percent doesn’t give you the picture. I think of kids and I think that drives home the issue a little bit more. If you say six-percent of our kids in the high school, now you’re looking at somewhere around 22-24 students. That’s people’s friends, that’s people’s sons, that’s people’s daughters, that’s your neighbor. That’s not a percentage, that’s real human beings that we’re talking about.”

Kinne points out there are outside factors that can lead to people feeling depressed and on a path towards committing suicide, especially with social media.

“I’m a big one on trying to be positive (and) trying to think about good things. I don’t normally watch things that will bring me down. But if you look at a lot of the reports (being) negative (like) people dying, the hurricane right now, the traumatic events that people around the world focus on. If you look at all those things it’s hard to keep a positive.”

To hear more from Kinne on National Suicide Prevention Week, including howthe school district is addressing the issue, listen to Monday’s and this Thursday’s Community State Bank in Paton Let’s Talk Greene County program.