RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif. (KABC) -- A string of recent suicides in Rancho Cucamonga has shaken the community, with the youngest victim a 10-year-old boy who attended Victoria Grove Elementary school.A week later, two girls and a boy also took their own lives. The three high school students attended Etiwanda, Alta Loma and Rancho Cucamonga high schools. "It is tragic something is going on that we're missing," Debbie Reyerse said.Reyerse's husband is a teacher at one of those schools. "It becomes very personal when your husband comes home and he is crying because it is him who lost a student," she said.The San Bernardino County Department of Behavior Health said teenage suicides are on the rise. The agency said parents or a trusted adult play an important tool in prevention. "To open that door is really important. To listen without judgment and then ask some probing questions gently and with love," director Veronica Kelley said.Kelley adds it is also important to get your child help. "Know when you should reach out for help," she said. "You can reach out to law enforcement, to your pediatrician, to a mental health provider that is really important. "Denise Lambiase said communication was key when it came to talking to her son following a string of suicides at his high school a few years ago. "I just told him he had to talk to me, and I would help him because he had a friend that was really dealing with a lot stuff," she said.Reyerse echoes the advice. "It is communication, our children don't communicate any more. They are too stuck on their cellphones," she said.The San Bernardino County Department of Behavioral Health offers mental health services. The Access Unit is a call center of mental health professionals that can refer you to the appropriate services, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.<doc-sep>After a string of suicides within the first two weeks of classes, Rancho Cucamonga school districts are refocusing their attention on mental health services and suicide prevention projects. Four students who attended Rancho Cucamonga school districts — a 10-year-old boy, a 15-year-old girl, a 16-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy — died by suicide from Aug. 6 to Aug. 19, officials said this week. “There is no greater tragedy than the death of a young person, and since the start of the school year, our Chaffey District community has been shaken by the loss of three students to suicide,” said Mathew Holton, superintendent of the Chaffey Joint Union High School District, in a message to parents. Therapists were deployed to each school to assist grieving students and staff. A total of 18 marriage and family therapists, 54 counselors, 27 psychologists and five psychotherapists are available to students across the district’s 12 schools. Advertisement Holton sent parents an email Tuesday night outlining what the district is doing for mental health and suicide prevention. The district already has a task force composed of mental health professionals from each school and community members who meet regularly to expand and improve its services, he said. On Tuesday, a new community task force had its first meeting, Holton said. City officials, police and fire chiefs and superintendents of school districts in the area met to discuss how they can share resources to meet students’ and community members’ mental health needs. Holton also told parents the district will develop more partnerships with mental health agencies in the area and organize more programs — such as assemblies and classroom curriculum — with topics that include information about suicide, bullying, self esteem and the appropriate use of social media. “Mental health is so complex,” Holton said by phone Wednesday. “As a district we are committed to continue to have a pulse on our campuses, to watch our campuses and, most importantly, to be proactive in our relationship with our students and the services we provide for them.” The Alta Loma School District, a K-8 district, will also be involved in the community task force Holton referenced. “The Alta Loma School District is deeply saddened at the loss of one our students,” said Supt. James Moore in an emailed statement. “The District has rallied around the family, students and staff to provide support and resources during this difficult time. We will continue to provide multi-tiered systems of support for all of our students throughout the year.” The district did not respond to further questions. Advertisement Mental health experts have expressed concern about “suicide contagion,” a phenomenon in which people are influenced to attempt suicides after hearing about it, either in the news or in their communities. After the death of actor Robin Williams in 2014, suicide rates in the country increased by 10%, according to a study published in the journal PLOS One in February. And after the death of Marilyn Monroe in 1962, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that suicide rates jumped 12% compared with the previous year. When celebrity chef and author Anthony Bourdain killed himself this year, days after the suicide of fashion icon Kate Spade, Madelyn Gould, a professor of epidemiology in child psychiatry at Columbia University, said, “I was sad for him and for all the people who were going to hear about it, and I am also sad for people who might be influenced by it.” On social media, Rancho Cucamonga parents grieved and discussed their shared worries that social media and phones are keeping children isolated, making them more susceptible to bullying and possibly even encouraging them to participate in dangerous behavior. Advertisement The “Momo Challenge” was one topic of concern in the Rancho Cucamonga News Group on Facebook. On WhatsApp and other messaging tools, people can text the account — whose avatar is a sculpture of a woman with disturbing and exaggerated features — and the account responds with threatening and demeaning comments. The Buenos Aires Times reported that the death of a 12-year-old girl in Argentina may be linked to the game. Holton said that he is aware of the game and that parents and staff should keep an eye on these online phenomena as well as TV shows that relate to suicide, such as Netflix’s “13 Reasons Why.” But he sternly denied that the Momo Challenge had anything to do with the recent suicides. A spokesperson for the Fontana Police Department, which responded to the death of one of the students in his Fontana residence, said the suicide was “not related to that at all.” The suicides do not appear to be connected and the students did not know one another, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. Advertisement Howard Adelman, co-director of the School Mental Health Project at UCLA, said large school districts can have difficulty seeing the effect of their mental health and suicide prevention services on a large scale. “There’s a difference between having something that you would like to happen across the system and to actually have it go to scale at every school in a big district,” he said. Because of limited resources, the measures taken by schools to improve mental health are often “fragmented and piecemeal,” he said. Adelman encourages a more proactive and broad approach to mental health in schools. Schools should promote positive emotional and social development as well as respond to crisis situations like the one Rancho Cucamonga schools are facing now, he said. Advertisement “The solution isn’t just add more bodies, but to take a step back and look at this from a system perspective,” he said. Gov. Jerry Brown is expected to sign legislation that would require public schools to print the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline phone number on the identification cards of students in grades seven through 12. Senate Bill 972 by Sen. Anthony Portantino (D-La Cañada Flintridge) passed in both houses and if signed would be implemented starting July 2019. Holton said that since the deaths, the student body has rallied together. Students in high schools across the district wore red in honor of their classmates, and there have been a number of activities to show support since the deaths were reported, he said. On Twitter, students grieved and posted their support for friends and family of one Etiwanda High School student who appears to be one of those who died. Advertisement “What is most challenging … is really making sure that we are there for students and they feel like they can communicate and feel like they have someone who will listen to them, that cares about them,” Holton said. “We’re all in this together.” If you or a loved one is considering suicide, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255). alejandra.reyesvelarde@latimes.com<doc-sep>
RANCHO CUCAMONGA (CBSLA) – A spate of recent youth suicides has rocked parents in Rancho Cucamonga. It all started when an 11-year-old student from Victoria Groves Elementary took his own life earlier this month. “It’s only elementary school, so that was really quite upsetting to hear that a child that young would have no one to go to,” said mom Katie Ganser. “That’s pretty sad.” But it wasn’t an isolated incident. In the last two weeks, three other students from Etiwanda, Rancho Cucamonga, and Alta Loma high schools have also taken their own lives. Investigators say the cases do not appear suspicious. The other students all attended different high schools in the city, and there is no indication that they knew each other. Mental health experts say the number is alarming. “Teenage suicide is on the rise nationally, but not like this,” Dr. Timothy Hougen of the San Bernardino County Department of Behavioral Health. School administrators declined to comment on the cases for privacy reasons. But the Alta Loma superintendent released a statement saying, “The District has rallied around the family, students and staff to provide support and resources during this difficult time.” Chaffey Joint Union superintendent sent a letter to parents saying, “We care deeply about our students and have deployed counseling teams of trained therapists at each of our schools to help students and our staff through their grief.” While the county continues to work with schools on programs that tackle issues like suicide, bullying and self-esteem, they say parents also play an important role.