The Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital has joined forces with Henry M. Gunn High School and Palo Alto High School to promote mental health in high school students as part of Project Safety Net, a mental health initiative based in Palo Alto.

“As a school district and a hospital, our missions are joined,” said Shashank Joshi, director of the child and adolescent psychiatry residency program at Lucile Packard, according to Inside Stanford Medicine. Joshi also serves as an executive committee member at Project Safety Net.

The collaboration follows multiple teen suicides in 2009 and 2010 at both Gunn and Palo Alto High. The program seeks to increase teen awareness of common mental health issues and methods of response, in addition to reinforcing positive social bonds between students.

The More Than Sad project at Palo Alto High School includes a video presentation that teaches students how to identify and respond appropriately to depression. The video medium won teacher approval due to its portability and the ability to split up the program’s delivery into multiple sessions, according to Inside Stanford Medicine.

Initiatives at Gunn have focused on breaking traditional social codes by encouraging upperclassmen to approach freshmen as peers. The programs have also incorporated collaboration with the peer support group Reach Out. Care. Know (ROCK). ROCK recruits students from different social groups to act as peer leaders and deliver encouraging messages to students.

Lucile Packard has been instrumental in providing funding for the Palo Alto projects by assisting with the clinical and research infrastructure, according to Inside Stanford Medicine.

— Judith Pelpola