The pandemic has taken a teenager’s schooling and his beloved football game. He committed suicide.

“He had an old tire… tied a rope around and cut a backpack. All the neighbors saw him there dragging him around the lawn. He raked the lawn most of the summer. with that tire. It was full of grass. “

But when the pandemic dragged on and the school first announced a reduced football season and then a switch to flag football, Smith said Spencer began to worry. He was a tackler, not a runner, after all.

Eventually he left the team. He stopped training and started taking more naps. Previously a student on the Honor Roll, Spencer also struggled with distance learning.

Looking back, Spencer’s father said there were signs how much he missed his teammates, the BBQs and Thursday night spaghetti dinners.

But nothing could have prepared him for this December morning.

Jay Smith got a text from his wife saying Spencer must have slept again because he missed class. He went to his son’s room. He had died by suicide.

“I just asked, ‘Spencer, why? »Said his father.

Stops coinciding with emergency room visits

A growing number of families are like the Smiths – losing a child to suicide during the pandemic.

Youth suicides had generally increased before the pandemic and it is too early to associate an increase in deaths directly with school closings, said Katrina Rufino, associate professor of psychology at the University of Houston.

But she co-authored a study that found there had been a significant increase in the number of mental health-related emergency room visits to a Houston children’s hospital since the coronavirus hit the United States. .

In Houston, the rise in the number of teens having suicidal thoughts and harming themselves has coincided with pandemic-related closures, including school closings, Rufino and colleagues wrote in an article published in Pediatrics. , the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“Our analysis found that there were significantly higher rates of suicidal ideation in March and July 2020 – that’s when you really saw the effects here in Houston,” Rufino said of about of the study, which examined emergency room admission at Texas Children’s Hospital for older youth. 11 to 21.

“It was in March that things started, things started to stop. Here in Houston, we closed the rodeo, the schools went home after spring break. And then it was in July that we really started to see our surge here in Houston.

Heartbreaking deaths

Student mental health is a concern across the country. In Nevada, the Clark County school district, the fifth largest in the country, which includes Las Vegas, was particularly hard hit.

The youngest child to die was only nine years old.

Superintendent Jesus Jara says he feels the losses personally.

“It’s heartbreaking as a superintendent to lose a child. It’s heartbreaking as a leader, ”he said.

Jara said some children have trouble not eating enough. For some, their parents may have lost their jobs or the children must take on new responsibilities with the closure of schools.

Signs of trouble began in early fall when a warning system on school laptops and tablets, programmed to detect mental and emotional struggles, showed an alarming increase in research.

“Children Google“ how to kill themselves ”. You get the alerts – you get four or five a day, ”Jara said.

The Clark County School Board has now backed a plan to resume face-to-face teaching for elementary students starting in March, which is good news for Jara.

“My teachers work really hard, but it’s this face to face interaction. You can’t take a noisy dining room for granted,” he said.

In-person schools help students cry together

In-person schools can also help prevent more students from feeling overwhelmed after the loss of a classmate – a process that Rufino at the University of Houston calls “postvention” and that she says is wrong. of crucial importance in conjunction with preventive measures.

“In a youth suicide, you really have to worry about things like suicide contagion or suicide clusters, because they are quite common among young people,” she told CNN. “When a young suicide takes place, a school will quickly implement a ‘postvention’ plan. It provides students and teachers with the support they so badly need, ”she said, adding that they could face the tragic loss together.

“However, if the schools are not on campus, it will be really difficult to implement a postvention plan. And it is possible that this leaves parents struggling, not knowing how to talk to their children.”

Spencer Smith’s parents believe that if schools and youth programs had been opened with good social distancing, allowing children to be together safely, he might not have died.

They urge other families not to take face-to-face interaction for granted.

“Check them every morning, every night, no matter how old they are, if they’re home,” Jay Smith said. “Always give them a hug, tell them how proud you are of them.” I remember always saying that to Spencer. I think I should have told him more.