ABSTRACT

On a Friday, in the winter of my first year as a school psychologist, a 14 year old 10th grader gained access to the cafeteria roof and during lunch, in front of hundreds of classmates and school staff, jumped to his death. In the days, weeks and months that followed, scores of students would be referred and dozens hospitalized on 72 hour holds. Almost one year later, at a neighboring high school, a 17 year old 12th grader gained access to a third story walkway and leaped to his death. This copycat event took place just a few hours after school let out, but the victim fell in full view of the softball field where the girls team was playing a league game. While this incident was tragic enough, they were playing the girls team from my school—the second horrific event they had witnessed. They were now the most complex and challenging trauma-exposed subgroup I could imagine. Those girls had actually witnessed both deaths by suicide.