Thank you Elena and paloaltoonline for this informative summary. March is well-known in the youth mental health community to be a time of increased need for kids who may have mental health issues or who may be suffering temporarily from depression due to school or social issues. If you are questioning whether your child who is 14 or older is safe, I would urge you to contact San Jose Behavioral Health www.sanjosebh.com . They are the only in-county provider of youth inpatient services and they will send a counselor to your home free of charge to discuss inpatient care with your family. Unfortunately, all children under the age of 14 are still sent out-of-county (sometimes as far as Sacramento) for inpatient care. SJBH is developing a partial hospitalization program (the next step down from hospitalization) for 14-17 yr olds but, right now, that level of care does not exist in our county as well.
Many organizations are developing outpatient programs but I believe this report emphasizes the critical need for hospitalization and partial hospitalization. Our county officials and our hospital providers need to step up without delay and help make sure that our critically ill children can find the treatment they need.

Why doesn't this report address the real reason why the suicide rate is so high in this area? Everyone knows and no one wants to talk about it. Not PC
Parents and the culture of success at all costs are crushing kids with brutal academic expectations. Kids are considered failures unless they can get into brand name, preferable Ivy League colleges. Parents compel the children also to take on an absurd amount of sports and extra-curricular activities. Parents and society consider them slackers an losers if they don't measure up. Teenagers cannot handle that kind of conditional love. Parents aren't even around as they work under similar pressures.
If the CDC and the reporter had the guts they would break down the suicides by "demographics" and socio-economic groups. This analysis would show that suicide rates here are way higher than national rates when adjusted for these factors.
A tragedy that you are destroying your children in this manner. One of the reasons we moved away, to spare our son this deadly culture.

Take your kids and move as far away from Silicon Valley as possible.

This place is a washing machine stuck on spin cycle... And always will be.

Instead of running away in reactive, irrational fear, we simply chose not to impose such pressures on our kids. They're happy, extremely healthy, and thriving, yes right here in Silicon Valley.
It's only a risky game if you choose to play it.