In the classrooms and hallways of two Catholic high schools, teens are raising awareness and helping their classmates through the Catholic Lifesaver Corps, a new suicide prevention effort in the Archdiocese of Seattle.

“I want to be able to educate people on how they can better respond” and get help for a classmate thinking about suicide, said Leah Steege, 17, a senior this fall at Archbishop Murphy High School in Everett.

Suicide is the second-leading cause of death among teenagers and young adults in the U.S., according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

Before going through the inaugural CLC training retreats last spring, Steege and some of the other teens had experienced friends talking about suicidal thoughts or even wanting to commit suicide.

“It’s become kind of a normal thing a lot of people our age go through,” Steege said.

The CLC students are passionate about helping their peers, sharing what they have learned with their schools and parishes. By the end of May, these student facilitators had already trained 62 other students, parents and school staff.

“We’re raising awareness and helping people become more open and comfortable about talking about the topic of suicide” and how to go about suicide prevention, said Bianca Obillo, 17, a rising senior at Archbishop Murphy who attends St. Mary Magdalen Parish in Everett.

Archbishop Murphy and Pope John Paul II High School in Lacey are the first Catholic high schools in the archdiocese to join the CLC program — a partnership of the archdiocese, the Office of Catholic Schools and the Fulcrum Foundation, which has contributed $38,500 to the initiative.

“The data shows our kids are very distressed,” said Sandra Barton Smith, who recently retired as the archdiocese’s assistant superintendent for mission and Catholic identity. “Everyone’s leaning in to protect our youth. That’s gratifying,” she said.

Four students from each school and five staff members were trained in March at the Archbishop Brunett Retreat Center, where they were commissioned during a Mass celebrated by Archbishop Paul D. Etienne and then Bishop-elect Frank Schuster. In his homily, Archbishop Etienne reflected on his time as a suicide prevention hotline operator during college, spoke about CLC as a way of living the Gospel, and expressed pride in the students for stepping up, according to Joe Cotton, the archdiocese’s director of pastoral care and outreach.

The students are now teaching classmates the skills to recognize the signs and signals of suicidal ideation and how to open the conversation with their peers, Cotton said. When necessary, students will walk with a classmate to a school counselor or other trained adult who can further assist, he said.

In the coming year, the CLC students will teach workshops at their schools and parishes and more Catholic high schools will have the opportunity to participate in the training — so more teenagers can reach out to help their peers who are thinking about suicide. “This is the weary … who Jesus is calling us to minister to,” said Julie Suek, a counselor at JPII whose background is in emergency mental health. “He’s calling us to minister to each other. It’s not just someone over there, it’s the kid you’re sitting next to in math.”

Pope John Paul II High School students with their counselor Julie Suek, left, at a CLC training.

Grounded In faith, human dignity

In looking for a suicide prevention training program for teens, the archdiocese and the Office of Catholic Schools wanted training “that really reflected our faith,” Barton Smith said.

They found LivingWorks through David and Cassandra Pina, parishioners at St. James Cathedral who have taught LivingWorks workshops in the archdiocese. David Pina’s proposal for a teen peer training program was “fully embraced” by the archdiocese’s Mental Health Ministry committee, Cotton said.

The training has two pieces: the ASIST (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training) workshop, and safeTALK (Tell, Ask, Listen and KeepSafe), a workshop about how to recognize and respond to the signs of suicidal ideation — the workshop teens are now teaching to their peers.

The goal of safeTALK is teaching people “to identify anyone who’s thinking of suicide and … refer them to resources that can keep them alive,” Pina said. Thanks to the persistence of Los Angeles teenager Jake Novack, this is the first time LivingWorks has sanctioned anyone under 18 to become safeTALK facilitators, Pina added.

To connect the archdiocese’s training to the faith, everything during the pair of two-day CLC retreats was grounded in “God and Catholic principles that respect life and human dignity,” Cotton said.

Archbishop Murphy High School students with their counselor Dane Stringfellow, left, at a CLC training.

Changing the culture

Catherine Evans, 16, an incoming junior at JPII, said she has always been passionate about mental health. But after her father’s suicide in early 2021, she became “really determined to try to make a difference, starting here in my school community. I know how terrible [suicide is], and it changes your life and everyone around you.”

By passing along what she has learned from the safeTALK training, the St. Michael parishioner hopes more people become “comfortable with asking other people about suicide.”

Her classmate and fellow parishioner, Noah Frey, 16, said his hope is that “everybody in our school is suicide-aware,” has been trained in SafeTALK and is willing to be the person a classmate or friend can turn to in a time of crisis.

At Archbishop Murphy, two safeTALK workshops presented last spring have raised awareness and are “already starting to change the conversations” among participants, said school counselor Dane Stringfellow. Ideally all students at the Everett school would have safeTALK training, he said, so if a student has suicidal thoughts, “someone will be connecting with them and directing them to get help.”

So far, the peer facilitator training is being provided at no cost because of Fulcrum Foundation grants and a $10,000 private donation, Cotton said.

“We are really proud to be a part of this,” said Susan Ocoma, programs director for Fulcrum. “We’re excited to see what the payoff will be.”

The goal, Barton Smith said, is to make it possible for all Catholic high schools to participate in SafeTALK. She is hopeful that more donors will step up so the program can be extended to more students.

These students, she said are acting as “the eyes and ears and the hands of Christ” among their peers. “We feel they’re going to change the culture.”

Northwest Catholic — August/September 2022