A community task force created in response to a series of teenage suicides on the Caltrain tracks in Palo Alto issued a report this week recommending that the city and school district each assign a senior-level employee to steer youth mental health and suicide prevention efforts.
The Project Safety Net Task Force also urges the Palo Alto Unified School District to bolster the mental health aspect of its K-12 health education curriculum.
Rob de Geus, a Palo Alto city recreation services manager and co-chair of Project Safety Net, said the report is a "description of what we've experienced last year as a community and how we as a community responded to that." He said it also addresses "where do we go from here."
The task force hopes the report will be used in policy making and community decision making, de Geus said.
Five teenagers — three who were enrolled at Gunn High School, one who was going to be a freshman there and a recent graduate — lost their lives in the seven-month period between May 2009 and January 2010 at or near the same railroad crossing near the school.
Following the apparent suicides, community meetings were held, grief counseling groups reached out to families, and suicide prevention experts and school districts that had experienced similar tragedies offered their help to Palo Alto. Project Safety Net, which was formed last summer, includes mental health experts and city and school district
representatives, as well as others.
The task force's report documents how the city came together in response to the suicides and aims to provide a
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