Montana has one of the highest rates of suicide among teenagers in the country, according to a presentation recently given to the Helena School District Board of Trustees.

And Lewis and Clark County has an even higher rate than the state.

The Helena Suicide Prevention Coalition — composed of 47 representatives from schools, public health, social services, mental health and concerned citizens — was formed to address that distressing fact and find ways to prevent suicide among local teenagers.

The coalition recently received a $30,000 grant from the Montana Department of Health and Human Services to help pay the salary of a community suicide prevention coordinator as well as a pilot program called TeenScreen.

The pilot program is a voluntary screening process that will determine whether a high school student is at risk for depression, suicide or other mental health problems. The consent of parents as well as the student is required for the screening.

TeenScreen is a computer- generated questionnaire that takes about 10 minutes and generates only a positive or negative outcome as it screens for risk factors or red flags. It is not a comprehensive suicide screening.

The questionnaire covers anxiety, depression, substance abuse and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. The program does not endorse any particular treatments but rather aims to identify those who may be at risk of attempting suicide.

Teens who have undiagnosed mental health illness face a serious barrier to well-being, success and learning. According to the TeenScreen Web site, approximately 750,000 teens in the U.S. suffer from depression, some so seriously it leads to suicide, the third leading cause of death amon teens. It adds that only a small portion of these students ever receive help or treatment for their depression.

If the outcome of the screening is positive, the student will have a brief clinical interview with a mental health professional. If that professional decides that a more complete evaluation is needed, he or she will be paired with a case manager and services in the community.

The screening focuses on sophomores at Capital High School, and it has yet to be determined how students will be identified for letters to families inviting the student to voluntarily participate in TeenScreen.

Superintendent of Helena Schools Bruce Messinger said, “We are taking small steps before we make it too big.”

Judy Griffith, the school district’s chemical prevention coordinator, has worked in suicide prevention for two decades and will help shepherd the process.

However, she along with the other teachers and administration, cannot be involved in the TeenScreen process to ensure student confidentiality.

Griffith said that TeenScreen has been implemented in 500 sites in the United States with the vast majority in them located in schools.

Mike Henderson, nurse and administrator of the disease control and surveillance for the County Health Department, said the coordinator’s job will be to focus on the whole effort the coalition.

Part of the application process requires candidates to write and submit a plan on how they will organize and meet all the objections of the coalition.

The goals of the coalition are to increase community screening for potential suicides, to increase community education about suicide, to assure that suicidal individuals can access treatment locally and finally, to improve advocacy for individuals at risk of completing suicide.

The coordinators job will also be to oversee TeenScreen to be implemented this spring. The number of students to be screened will be dependent upon the number of parents and students who agree to participate.

“We are at the beginning of the planning process,” Henderson said.

He added that he’d like to see this type of screening implemented in the high school as part of a routine health screening.