Major
Biological Sciences
Minor(s)
Chemistry
Advisor
Murphy, Sara, G
Advisor Department
Honors Program
Date
5-2025
Keywords
Suicide prevention; Public Secondary Schools; Nathan Bruno and Jason Flatt Act
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.
Abstract
Suicide has become the second leading cause of death in adolescents in the United States (CDC, 2023). To prevent suicide among school-aged children, the state of Rhode Island enacted the Nathan Bruno and Jason Flatt Act (2021-H5353, 2021-S003) in July of 2021. The legislation requires teachers, students (Grade 6 through 12), and hired school personnel to be annually trained in suicide awareness and prevention. In addition, each public school district must adopt a policy addressing produces relating to suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention. This project aimed to evaluate the level of compliance with the Nathan Bruno and Jason Flatt Act and to determine whether its intended spirit has been embraced by Rhode Island public secondary schools. I assessed the education resources allocated, and programs established in response to the Act through an IRB exempted survey questionnaire and complementary interview. Most respondents indicated that the Nathan Bruno and Jason Flatt Act has enhanced the resources available to students, though survey and interview responses were limited. Additionally, respondents indicated that school personnel and students have been trained in suicide prevention. Most participants also indicated that prevention, intervention, postvention, and communication policies have been put into place in their secondary school. The responses collected cannot be generalized for the full population of Rhode Island public secondary schools due to limited sample size. Therefore, more research is necessary to analyze the success rate of the Nathan Bruno and Jason Flatt Act. I recommend that the Act be amended to include an annual attestation requirement as well as parental suicide prevention training. The project culminated with me presenting my collected data and analysis-based conclusions through a virtual forum held on April 21st.