This is research that our Community Foundation provided seed funding to support, that then gained national attention and attracted NIH funding.
By NATHAN DEAL Nathan.Deal@gjsentinel.com, Feb 17, 2024
In 2018, Mesa County Valley School District 51 and then-Superintendent Diana Sirko caught the attention of sociologists from Indiana University Bloomington, with the two parties forming a partnership based on a shared interest: understanding and preventing youth suicide.
Funded by the Western Colorado Community Foundation and the National Institute of Mental Health, these sociologists launched the Social Worlds and Youth Well-being Study (SWYWS), which saw eight field researchers — most of them from Indiana University — spend three years observing and shadowing 271 participants (mostly D51 staff), interviewing 281 people (including 48 students, 69 families and 164 D51 staffers), and receiving 701 survey responsibilities from families and 568 from district staff, all to determine strategies for the district to improve its suicide prevention methods.
Anna Mueller, the study’s principal investigator and an associate professor of sociology at Indiana, and Seth Abrutyn, an associate sociology professor at the University of British Columbia, provided their final report Tuesday evening at the D51 Board of Education’s special meeting at R-5 High School.
The report identified six “take-home points” for board members and district leaders:
1. Schools have a broad mandate from families and staff to do mental health promotion and suicide prevention;
2. Schools must do this work because emotionally distressed and suicidal kids are at school in need of support;
3. The district and schools must have systems to support this critical work to support children;
4. Ensuring staff are trained and knowledgeable about mental health and trauma helps staff’s own well-being and their ability to help kids;
5. D51 school staff’s well-being must be considered, too;
6. Schools cannot do this work alone, as they need the support of the broader community, including pediatricians, faith communities and leaders, psychiatrists, therapists, crisis counselors and emergency rooms.
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