The Municipality of La Lagunathrough the Youth and Education area, leads a “pioneering” project in the Canary Islands for the prevention, detection and intervention of youth suicide in the educational field, developed with the Official School of Psychology of Santa Cruz de Tenerife (Coptfe) and that was presented yesterday by the councilor of the area, José Juan Gavilán; the dean of Coptfe, Carmen Linares, and the coordinator of the school’s suicide working group and of this project, Felipe Lagarejo.
This pilot project will begin in five institutes in the municipality, in the first year of Baccalaureate, until the end of this school year and during the first months of the next, although the objective of the Department is to extend it to all IES and keep it stable.
“Since 2020, we have been working on a telephone service strategy for youth to attend to these problems, this year we have decided to give the initiative a new twist, doing it in person, since the pandemic allows us, and we are going to carry out this pioneering test in five institutes”, indicated the mayor. A “totally new” and “pioneer in the Canary Islands” initiative that is expected to be continued and extended to the rest of the institutes, he added.
Specifically, the project, as explained by Felipe Lagarejo, consists, on the one hand, of workshops for students to raise awareness of this problem and awareness of mental health, and include a dramatized action. In addition, the teaching staff, and all the staff that work in the center, will receive training so that they can detect the alarm signals, how to do it and activate the action protocol if necessary, in which specialized professionals will carry out evaluations to identify young people in risk, to whom assistance and professional treatment will be provided.
A project “pioneering compared to others in Spain because it puts the focus on psychologists”, since they generally focus on teachers or health personnel, Lagarejo said.
“We have to talk about real projects like this that work directly with the affected population, in this case young people, and where we are going to give teachers and the educational community the opportunity to identify and anticipate the problem. The school has been concerned and working on the issue of suicide for a long time,” said Carmen Linares, who also advocated “breaking the taboo surrounding” communication about these cases. “We must treat the news with respect, but let’s not stop communicating because if not, it doesn’t exist, and the problem is real,” she added.
Figures regarding youth suicide
Although there are no local data, the latest annual report from the Suicide Observatory in Spain reveals that it is the first external cause of death in Spain in the age group between 14 and 29 years, and that the rate in this age group doubled in 2020 , year in which the pandemic began, compared to the previous one. The “alarming” data for that 2020 in the Canary Islands are the highest since records exist, with 208 suicides among the entire population, Lagarejo pointed out. “We are the first autonomous community in youth suicide and also the first in the consumption of antidepressants or anxiolytics,” added the councilor.
