I went to highschool in Utah, every year we had at least one assembly about suicide prevention. We had more depending on if a suicide happened in one of the counties nearby. Not one for each since that would have taken a while.

There was a month or two where there were like six pretty rapid fire and one by a student at our school. We’d already had an assembly pretty recently, so they didn’t have another one. It was a very quiet week, but then everything went back to normal, as always.

Anyway if you’re wondering why it’s that bad in the Great Basin region of the US the answer is Mormonism, and lack of education/resources especially in rural areas.

The assemblies I mentioned weren’t “this is how you can deal with things” they were “no one in their right mind would do this, suicide and thinking about it is weak and stupid so stop” or they were “god doesn’t want you to die” neither were effective.

Then again I wouldn’t expect effective solutions from people who are the problem. Not sure any amount of words from men who use “gay” and “queer” as an insult would help queer kids feel like living in that hell was better than death.

Oh and if anyone is wondering, this was less than a decade ago, not in the very distant past. I think most of the staff in my highschool are still the same, and the majority of the residents in the town certainly haven’t moved, physically or “spiritually.” Honestly, with the trump rhetoric they’ve probably gotten worse.