Colorado students are seeking help from Safe2Tell — the state’s system for making anonymous reports about safety concerns — at levels not seen since before the pandemic, according to a new report released Monday.
Safe2Tell saw report volumes drop during the height of COVID-19 as schools were shuttered and students moved to remote learning. But report volumes fully rebounded during the 2022-23 academic year and even slightly exceeded pre-pandemic levels — with concerns about suicide the leading reason why students contact Safe2Tell, according to the program’s annual report.
The state logged 22,486 reports to Safe2Tell during the last school year, a 16% increase from the previous year and marginally higher than the 22,332 reports the program received in 2018-2019, the last full year before pandemic disruptions, according to the report released by the Colorado Attorney General’s Office.
CRISIS POINT: Teens increasingly turn to Safe2Tell for suicide, mental health emergencies. But Colorado doesn’t track what happens next. (From 2020)
”These kids are using this lifeline and they are using it more and more often,” said Dr. Lauren Eckhart, clinical director of the Colorado Springs Division of Children’s Hospital Colorado’s Pediatric Mental Health Institute.
It’s unclear whether Safe2Tell reports are increasing because children are back in school and are hearing about the program more often or if it’s because they are experiencing things that typically happen more often on campuses, such as bullying, Attorney General Phil Weiser said.
Safe2Tell saw bullying reports jump 40% to 1,992 tips during the 2022-23 school year compared to the previous year, according to the annual report.
Children and teens have become more comfortable reporting when they are being bullied compared to past generations, Eckhart said, adding that the increase in overall tips shows that “kids are willing to talk about things.”
Parents can use Safe2Tell’s annual report as a way to start difficult conversations with their children about mental health and bullying, she said.
Safe2Tell received 2,840 reports dealing with suicide during the last school year, which is up 7% from the 2021-22 academic year. But it’s down from 3,821 suicide reports the program received in 2019-2020, according to the annual report.
“We are very concerned that there are reports out there we’re not hearing about,” Weiser said.
Safe2Tell was created after the 1999 Columbine High School massacre to combat youth violence and prevent another such attack.
In the decades since, Safe2Tell has increasingly fielded tips from students seeking mental health help for themselves and their classmates — a trend that came as suicide became one of the leading causes of death for Colorado adolescents and as more children nationwide are struggling with depression and anxiety.
But Safe2Tell was never designed to operate as a crisis line and police are among the first notified when a report is made — a response that mental health experts have said can traumatize children, according to a 2020 Denver Post investigation.
The Post reported that the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, which runs the program, has historically not tracked what happens after authorities respond to Safe2Tell tips and a 2014 state law prevents the release of such information.
Following The Post’s reporting, the Attorney General’s Office released report outcome data for the first time in 2020. The data is limited and doesn’t reveal how often police respond to mental health crises compared to medical professionals or school employees.
A Safe2Tell tip can also have multiple outcomes, with reports leading to both welfare checks on a child and their parents being notified.
About half of the suicide reports that Safe2Tell received last year resulted in a welfare check and roughly 45%, or 1,272 of the tips, led to a person receiving counseling, according to data provided by the Attorney General’s Office.
A small percentage — 3%, or 99 reports — of the suicide tips led to a person being placed on a mental health hold or being hospitalized, according to the AG’s office.
Safe2Tell received 140 reports from someone concerned about their own mental health during the 2022-23 academic year and they were each offered a chance to connect with Colorado Crisis Services, but only six were transferred to the hotline, according to a news release.
Another 52 of mental health self-reports resulted in people receiving counseling services and seven of the reports resulted in a mental health hold or hospitalization, according to the news release.
Safe2Tell also has started tracking what it calls two-way dialogue when it receives a report, which shows how often a person who makes a report responds to an analyst’s follow-up questions after the initial report is submitted. Roughly, one in four reports included two-way dialogue during the 2022-23 academic year, according to the news release.
“Two-way dialogue tracking shows a promising development in our program, as it fosters communication and deeper understanding of reported issues, as well as potentially better resolutions,” said Stacey Jenkins, Safe2Tell’s director, in a statement.
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