Hotline featured in new teen-suicide prevention program

Wednesday, May 21, 2003 | 8:24 a.m.

A program to help teens who are thinking about killing themselves was set to begin today, stepping into a picture that includes high suicide rates and a shortage of services for troubled people.

The program will partner an out-of-state nonprofit and a company that owns hospitals with the local Montevista Hospital. Together the three groups will offer services such as a hotline for teens who are thinking of suicide, as well as information to parents and teachers about the warning signs of possible suicide attempts.

Nevada is second in the nation in the percentages of teens who have committed suicide, with 13.8 per 100,000 in 1998 -- the most recent year available -- according to Joe Ruley, a counselor and psychologist who will be working in the new program at Montevista.

The national rate was 8.8 per 100,000 the same year.

At Montevista 95 percent of the nearly 1,600 12- to 18-year-olds who were referred from hospitals or doctors last year had attempted or were considering suicide, Ruley said.

The project, led by the Jason Foundation, a Tennessee-based nonprofit, will supply a badly needed service, given the shortage of help in the fast-growing area of Southern Nevada, Dorothy Bryant, director of the Suicide Prevention Center of Clark County, said. The center also runs a hotline, but it receives calls from people of all ages. The hotline number is (877) 778-2275.

"Since they will focus on an area we don't, they will be able to cover things we can't," she said.

Ruley said the problem of teen suicide cuts across all economic levels, races and ethnic groups in the Las Vegas Valley.

He said the shortage of funding for mental health programs has helped create the high numbers of suicides among teens. A shortage of mental health beds has created a crisis in emergency rooms, when mentally ill patients cannot receive specialized care, local and state authorities have said.

The focus of the new program will be on prevention, Ruley said.