By Eliza PARTIKA

USC Verdugo Hills Hospital (USC-VHH) held its 11th Annual Suicide Awareness and Prevention Conference on Saturday giving hospital staff the chance to talk about the advances in mental health care and therapy options and offering advice on how to support loved ones. Sponsors included The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Horizon Health Corp, Navigate Foundation and Johnson & Johnson. Resources were available from NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) Glendale, Didi Hirsch Suicide Prevention Center LA County Office of Violence Prevention, USC Social Work Research team, USC Community Resource Center For Aging and USC Hospital Sleep Center, among others.

Speakers covered risk assessment, therapeutic intervention and safety planning for people at risk of suicide and provided resources for LGBTQ+, trans and non-binary youth experiencing mental health crises, and suicide among elementary school-aged students. 

Studies have shown that suicide often occurs when stressors and health issues converge to create an experience of hopelessness and despair, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s pamphlet “Talk Saves Lives.” 

“We want to help people feel better prepared to recognize when someone may be struggling and know where to turn to for appropriate support,” said USC-VHH director of Community Benefits Marie Filipian. 

Among the most concerning populations experiencing an increased risk of suicide are elementary school-aged youth. Suicide is a leading cause of death for people ages 10 and older and was responsible for 48,824 deaths in 2024, according to a May 2026 CDC report. 

One of the speakers – Kevin Callo, USMC, associate marriage and family therapist at the Child Guidance Center – encouraged health care providers to strengthen their community practice and engage with students to see what core issues lead to mental health crises. 

“We need to communicate and collaborate and talk and make changes so these statistics go down. We have to figure out ways to build a network. We can broaden, we can do things to make deeper connections. How can we make schools safer, how can we make peers more compassionate human beings? With unique challenges we need unique approaches,” said Callo.

“Between 2006 and [today] we have seen a rapid increase in suicides and mental health needs across the community,” said keynote speaker Dr. Steven Siegel, MD, Ph.D., noting a 50% increase in suicide by youth between the ages of 18 and 25. 

Siegel spoke about updates to USC’s My Mental Health platform that shortens typical mental health assessments, which usually take up to two hours, by using adaptive and predictive technology. The survey automatically sends at-risk students a mental health survey and based on responses refers them to a psychiatrist within 24-72 hours. 

“It will literally wake up someone in our department; we have a whole crisis team. [The counselor] will start calling that student,” he said. “We’ve spoken to every one of the students [who call] in the last five years.” 

With previous models, the wait time was nearly two weeks for an at-risk person to see someone; with the new survey, students have no wait times and can get the help they need, or insights into their mental health, immediately. Thirty percent of students who received the survey said they would not have made an appointment before taking the My Mental Health Assessment. 

As adults, said Callo, “When we receive bad news, we can control how we respond. As parents, we have to manage how we react to bad things. If we say, ‘Oh no, the world is ending’ our kids will think so too.” 

When asked about how restricted social media should be, Callo said it comes down to education about what it is like to live online, and parenting kids to teach them how to use the internet appropriately.

“There’s no cookie cutter approach because it depends on the individual. This is their form of communication. We don’t know what it’s like to live online. We might communicate with old friends but online is like a person to them. They live there. If I remove social media completely from a kiddo, that’s their whole social network,” he said. 

“If someone is really trying to live, but is struggling with the pain, we know how, now, to intervene. We know how to listen to people and maybe help them get through the pain and remember why they want to live,” said Robert Stohr, MS, LMFT.