Lower Moreland Schools Host Upcoming Annual Suicide Prevention & Awareness Event

LOWER MORELAND, PA — The Lower Moreland school community is preparing to host an annual suicide awareness event early next month.

The high school's Future Business Leaders of America, Interact, and SADD clubs joined forces to present the annual Out of the Darkness Suicide Prevention and Awareness Walk at Lower Moreland High School on April 9 beginning at 7:30 a.m.

The keynote speaker for the annual event, which this year once again takes place in-person, will be Pax Tandon, a well-known author, producer and media personality.

The school district said that the event comes as mental health issues and incidents of suicide have been on the increase following the global COVID-19 pandemic.

"We have seen in the past couple of years the toll that this pandemic has taken on the mental health and well being of our country," the school district states in a news release.

The district, citing numbers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that emergency department visits for suspected suicide attempts began to increase among adolescents aged 12-17 years, especially girls, since May 2020, and that in Pennsylvania, suicide is the second leading cause of death for those people ages 10 to 34 and the 11th leading cause of death in the Keystone State overall.

"We hope that as a community we can come together to help support our students and our community at large to help identify the signs and bring awareness to turn the tide on these staggering statistics," the district states in its news release. "These are not statistics that we should be complacent with."

More information about the upcoming event can be found here.