If you or someone you know are having thoughts of suicide, you can call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988.School therapist Shea Prophet is trying to find and help these students before they enter high school. He sees himself in many of them.His no-nonsense cadence and ramrod straight posture hint at his military background.He saw himself reflected in the incarcerated men and their challenges.
Now a program director for SBCS, formerly South Bay Community Services, he oversees an enormous task — screening San Ysidro School District students, second through eighth grade, and providing them with the right behavioral and emotional health services. “Beforehand, all my referrals would come from either the teachers or the parents, but it kind of eliminates the voice of the student themselves,” he said.“If we're putting a BandAid on it, we're working with them at school, and then they go home and it gets washed off because they don't have the appropriate services or they don't have the resources available to them, then a lot of our work is just going in circles,” he said.
Quitoriano said some of the mental health work in the San Diego Unified District is being led by students. In collaboration with UCSD, they’re designing a new mental health curriculum.