One in five California high school students experience thoughts of suicide, with some schools having much higher rates of suicide ideation than others; researchers issue a call to action for increased focused interventions at the whole school and public policy levels.

A new large-scale study of suicide ideation among more than 750,000 students in California high schools suggests a pressing need for public health campaigns to reduce youth suicide and an emphasis on the role of schools in prevention programs.

The study, published in The Journal of Pediatrics, reveals that one in five students seriously considered suicide in the last 12 months. Schools have different levels of student suicide ideation: rates in schools range from 4 percent to 67 percent, and researchers conclude that various school attributes are directly relevant to students’ mental health and suicide-related thoughts and behaviors. Targeting schools with the highest levels of ideation and providing additional resources, training and programs should be a top public health priority.

These findings are the result of a secondary analysis of the California Healthy Kids Survey performed by Ron Avi Astor, the Lenore Stein-Wood and William S. Wood Professor of School Behavioral Health at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, Rami Benbenishty (Bar Ilan University, Israel), and Ilan Roziner (Tel Aviv University, Israel). This large-scale analysis used the largest available representative sample of California high school students.

The researchers found that a positive and healthy school climate may provide a sense of safety and security for students, as well as protective factors such as engagement and belongingness, which could decrease suicidal thoughts among students. Alternatively, factors such as school violence victimization, discrimination against minorities, and gang affiliation are associated with suicidal thinking among adolescents. Females and students from certain racial groups (e.g., Asian) are more likely to consider suicide.

“Schools have a major role in explaining suicide thinking among California high school students,” Benbenishty says. “The impact of school composition goes beyond the individual characteristics of its students.”

Schools with high levels of moderate and discrimination-based student victimization and a larger number of female students have more students seriously contemplating suicide. Related research also shows that the number of LGBTQ students in a school, and their level of comfort in the school environment, are associated with individual student suicide ideation.

The analysis calls for a different approach to statewide prevention and treatment for suicide ideation in California high schools and beyond. “Traditionally, we’ve addressed adolescent suicide through a psychological lens,” Astor says. “While a mental health approach is encouraged, these data prove the need to analyze other factors that may be the root cause of suicide ideation, such as our school environments and peer group interaction.”

Identifying schools with the highest levels of suicidal ideation and providing additional supports, resources and training for the entire school community -- including students, teachers, administrators, coaches, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, psychologists, social workers and parents -- would be an important step to reduce suicidal ideation for those schools and statewide.

To read the full study, visit: http://www.jpeds.com/.