Their comments raise questions about how schools nationwide can better prepare for this reality. The school district said it continues to provide ongoing support to the community. Wilfredo Lee / AP Suzanne Devine Clark at a memorial outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School during the one-year anniversary of the school shooting. Two weeks after a gunman opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, killing 17 people on Feb. 14, 2018, students and survivors were back on campus, still struggling to process their trauma and grief. Kyra Parrow, who was a senior at the time, recalled how she could barely write an assigned paper for class. Her teacher told her to put her grief in a box and complete it, Parrow said. “This is an accurate description of how all survivors & students were treated by msd & Parkland,” Parrow, 19, said in tweets on Sunday. “Expected to brush aside our grief and deep mental wounds.” “The passing of two survivors by suicide is a awake up call of yet again, another failure by America,” she added. Parrow’s tweet came after a 17-year-old male Stoneman sophomore, who was at the school during the shooting, killed himself Saturday night. This was a day after the funeral of 19-year-old Sydney Aiello, a Stoneman graduate who was also at the school during the shooting, who killed herself March 17. GoFundMe Sydney Aiello Aiello’s mother told CBS News that she had been diagnosed with PTSD and had survivor’s guilt. Neither authorities nor family members have said if the sophomore’s death was related to the mass shooting. Experts warn against focusing on a single reason to explain why someone might kill themself. But after the deaths, several current and former Stoneman students on Twitter criticized the mental health resources they received after the shooting, with some saying they were told to push away their pain and grief. Their comments — in tweets and interviews with BuzzFeed News — echo beyond Parkland, and raise questions about how schools nationwide can better prepare for this reality. Broward County School District Superintendent Robert Runcie tweeted about the two deaths Sunday and offered suicide prevention resources for students and parents, including services such as resiliency centers, crisis hotlines, and dialing #211. And several Broward County community members, including parents, county officials, and mental health professionals, met Sunday to discuss what they could do to help students at Stoneman cope with trauma and depression, Runcie said. Meanwhile, Stoneman students and alumni tweeted the number “19” — adding the two recent deaths to the 17 victims of the shooting. 19. my heart breaks remember to check in on each other you never know what someone else faces 19. my heart breaks. we love you. 19 💔💔💔💔 Eden Hebron, a 16-year-old sophomore at the school whose friends knew the sophomore who died Saturday, told BuzzFeed News, “A lot of us didn’t get the care we needed and this is their last resort.” “The fact that it has got to this point is heartbreaking,” said Hebron, who was hiding under a desk in a classroom in the freshman building when she saw bullets strike and kill her friend Alyssa Alhadeff. Survivors and students said it had been difficult for them to return to campus two weeks after they had seen their friends and classmates die, and to pretend like things were normal. “It was definitely difficult for us to pass by a crime scene on campus every single day,” Parrow told BuzzFeed News. “We were expected to move on so fast,” Lex Michael, an 18-year-old alum, told BuzzFeed News. She tweeted Sunday, “When it comes down to it our trauma was quickly swept aside because they wanted everything to return to normal.” In response to the criticism, a spokesperson for Broward County Public Schools directed BuzzFeed News to a full list of recovery and wellness efforts the district offered immediately after the shooting and in the months since. The district opened five locations for the community to receive free mental health support, including a Broward County center staffed with full-time clinicians who provide “trauma-informed counseling services.” More than 25 mental health clinicians were staffed within the school zone along with therapy dogs, and two additional guidance counselors were added at the school. The school district said it engaged national experts on crisis bereavement and trauma to meet with parents of the victims and the injured students. The school district said it has provided ongoing support, including 3,588 clinical hours to students and 217 clinical hours to staff at the school’s wellness center, as well as equipping 10th-graders with skills for future planning that would “help the student bounce back from adversity.” School staff and clinicians were also trained in suicide prevention and trauma-focused behavioral therapy, the district said. Joel Auerbach / AP Students pet a therapy dog outside Pines Trails Center where grief counselors were present in February 2018. But the students said the school’s offerings didn’t feel adequate enough. After a couple of months, the therapy dogs went away. Two students told BuzzFeed News they didn’t think the grief counselors were enough for 3,200 students — and it was up to the students to seek them out for help. Victoria Gonzalez, a student who lost her boyfriend, Joaquin Oliver, in the shooting and who knew Sydney Aiello, tweeted Sunday, “We need real help. No more half-assed effort for full blown trauma and depression.” These kids need more. Not “trauma specialists” trained in 3 days. Not a hug from the suck ass principal. Not painted rocks or cards. We need real help. Real specialists. Real empaths. No more half-assed effort for full blown trauma and depression. This is what it does. Gonzalez, 18, told BuzzFeed News that she knew Sydney and “it was apparent she was suffering.” But she “seemed to have blossomed into a beautiful person at the time of the suicide, which doesn’t make sense to many people, but it goes to show you never really know what someone is going through,” she said. Gonzalez, who is a Stoneman senior, said that although there is a wellness center at the school filled with therapists from across the country, they are “most definitely not equipped to help the amount of students/faculty suffering the way we are.” Many other students avoided visiting the grief counselors because of what they described as “compared trauma.” Courtesy Kyra Parrow Kyra Parrow Parrow, who was right outside the school when the shooting happened, said that she and many others she knew didn’t seek the help they needed because discussions on campus often made them feel like their trauma was less important than that of those who were in the building where the shooting took place. Parrow didn’t know the sophomore who killed himself, but knew Aiello through mutual friends. “Like if you weren’t even in the building during the massacre, don’t call yourself a survivor,” was one of the constant refrains Parrow recalled hearing from other students. “You don’t know what PTSD is,” was another she said. Michael, who was home sick on the day of the shooting, said that people in her own community told her “there’s no way I could have ptsd and made me feel gross about even considering it and my experience was constantly invalidated.” “We thought they had a good point,” Parrow said. “I shouldn’t go to therapy because I’m fine.” Current and former Stoneman students tweeted over the weekend to express similar criticisms about available mental health services. students are repeatedly told to "get over it, it's been a year" by staff members. we are told to push the grief and pain away so we can "focus" on school. this is what happens when the mental health of students isn't taken seriously and is pushed under a rug. our friends need actual help. because the ‘just get over it’ rhetoric which has been forced upon us has done nothing to help the healing process. pushing normal so soon has buried the pain and the lack of professional support has been detrimental to mental health. i’m sorry 19 💔<doc-sep>David Schonfeld, a pediatrician and director of the National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement at the University of Southern California, has been working as a consultant to the Broward County school district in the year since the Parkland shootings and has helped coordinate mental-health recovery efforts in the aftermath of some of the country’s most devastating mass shootings. He said the school system, more than any other he has worked with, has been “open to ideas about how to do their job and how to change and try things that will help the students and the community.”<doc-sep>To the Editor: Re “Father of Sandy Hook Victim Dies” (news article, March 26): A father dedicated to helping prevent mass shootings after his daughter was killed in the Sandy Hook massacre has died in an apparent suicide. Jeremy Richman, 49, was the father of 6-year-old Avielle Richman, who was among 20 children and six teachers killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre . Imagine the daily anguish and torture of the parents of those 20 murdered children. Passing empty bedrooms, some probably still full of the clothes of their slain child. Imagine the depths of misery when birthdays come and go, and when there are empty chairs at family gatherings like Thanksgiving, and the absence of presents under the tree at Christmas. Then we have two suicides of student survivors of the Parkland shooting to add to the carnage. I’m fed up with “moments of silence” by Congress, the candlelight vigils and masses of flowers. We need a leader and a government like New Zealand’s. Instead, we have a Congress bought and paid for by the National Rifle Association and gun manufacturers, and a citizenship with no power to halt the daily gun killings. We hear the word “Enough!” uttered so often by so many. The result? Nothing is done. It’s obvious to me that Mr. Richman couldn’t stand the pain any longer. Let us all hope and pray for no more suicides caused by despair and misery.<doc-sep>
(CNN) — In the span of a week, three suicides have devastated communities already linked by mass tragedies. Two were young survivors of last year’s massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. One was the father of a child who was killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Their deaths have compounded the grief that still permeates Parkland, Florida, and Newtown, Connecticut. Here are the stories behind the lives lost: Jeremy Richman Craig Ruttle/AP Jeremy Richman, 49, spent his final years channeling his anguish into action. He lost his 6-year-old daughter, Avielle, in the Sandy Hook massacre. Avielle was among the 20 children and six adults killed. After the shooting, Richman co-founded the Avielle Foundation, a nonprofit named for Richman’s daughter that focuses on violence prevention through research and community engagement. In 2013, Richman told CNN about how he and his wife were coping, and about his desire to give back. “Every day we need to get out of bed. And Jen and I just came up with a just beautiful idea to get us out of bed,” Richman told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “Every day we try to find something of beauty, something that makes you feel the world’s a good place. And every day we want to make sure we try to, really strive to give back something of beauty, something to the world.” Richman died of an apparent suicide and was found in his Connecticut office building Monday morning, Newtown police said. The foundation he helped launch said it will continue fulfilling Richman’s goals. “Jeremy’s mission will be carried on by the many who love him, including many who share the heartache and trauma that he has suffered since December 14, 2012,” the foundation said. “We are crushed to pieces, but this important work will continue, because, as Jeremy would say, we have to.” Sydney Aiello GoFund Me Sydney Aiello, 19, was a 2018 graduate of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High. She was a bubbly, outgoing cheerleader who “was always eager to say hello to everyone in the hallway,” a former history teacher said. But everything changed on Valentine’s Day 2018 when a gunman killed 17 people at the school, including Aiello’s close friend Meadow Pollack. The massacre profoundly affected Aiello, who suffered from survivor’s guilt and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, her mother told CNN affiliate WFOR in Miami. Last year, Aiello shared a Facebook post after the suicides of Robin Williams, Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain. The post quotes friends or relatives of the late celebrities who described them as happy people. It stressed the need to check on all loved ones, even those who appear to be the strongest. Aiello, a student at Florida Atlantic University, killed herself March 17. Her funeral was Friday in Davie, Florida. “She lit up every room she entered,” wrote the organizer of a GoFundMe page, set up to help Aiello’s family pay for expenses. “She filled her days cheerleading, doing yoga, and brightening up the days of others. Sydney aspired to work in the medical field helping others in need. … It was a privilege to have you in our lives. Sydney, we will miss you and always love you.” Unnamed Parkland student On Saturday, a Stoneman Douglas student died in what police describe as “an apparent suicide.” The student has not been publicly identified, but CNN affiliate WFOR said the student was a male sophomore. The circumstances surrounding the student’s death are not clear. It’s also not certain whether the apparent suicide was related to last year’s mass shooting. But after the loss of two Stoneman Douglas survivors to suicide, community leaders urge parents everywhere to be vigilant and proactive in talking to their kids about trauma. Ryan Petty, who lost one child in the Parkland massacre and has another who survived, said parents can use questions from the Columbia Protocol on suicide risk assessment to help save lives. Such questions include: – Have you wished you could go to sleep and not wake up? – Have you thought about hurting yourself? – Have you thought about how you might accomplish this? The beauty of those questions is parents don’t need to be trained therapists to ask them, Petty said. “They can be part of the solution,” he said. “We really need to drive awareness.