Student survey gives insight into drug use, suicide

At the Jan. 13 school board meeting, Mountain Brook Schools Director of Student Services Amanda Hood presented the results of a survey administered this past fall.

Twelve-hundred students in grades nine through 12 voluntarily completed the Pride Survey in class. Taken in anonymity every three years, it gives administrators an honest glimpse into student life and behavior.

“The purpose of us conducting this survey is to compare us. This is really a nationally modeled survey, and it’s given across the country,” Hood said. “It’s an opportunity for us to create a checkpoint against national statistics to see where we are.”

The results of the survey are divided into seven sections: demographics, substance abuse, student perceptions, mental health, preventable accidents, school climate and family life. Administrators use the data to identify areas of concern and develop programming to address them.

Notably, the survey found that Mountain Brook students said they use illicit drugs — defined as alcohol, marijuana, cigarettes, e-cigarettes, prescription drugs and opioids — less frequently than their peers. The survey discovered that 12.8% of high school students across the country admitted to using illicit drugs in the last 30 days and 22.8% admitted to using them in the last year.

In Mountain Brook, those numbers were 10.1% and 20.4%.

“I know that there have been years where we have been above the national average, and so we have seen a decline in the usage of these illegal substances by teenagers,” Hood said. “It doesn’t mean that there is not work to do. There is always work to do in that area, but we do think that we are seeing a decline in the use of illegal substances.”

Hood attributes the decline, in part, to strong school and community programming through organizations such as All In Mountain Brook. A lot of the credit, however, goes to parents who aren’t afraid to have tough conversations with their children, Hood said.

The survey revealed that close to 96% of Mountain Brook students said their parents have set clear rules for them, and over 75% percent said their parents have explicitly spoken to them about tobacco, alcohol and drug use.

“We want to say thank you for being great parents to our community, because they make the difference,” Hood said. “I mean, they’re the game-changers. When you’re raising teenagers, they are the number one factor that influences these types of behaviors.”

The heartening feedback regarding illegal substances was impacted by declining alcohol use, Hood said. Although Mountain Brook has traditionally grappled with student alcohol use more than other communities, new data offers encouragement.

The percentage of seniors who said they have consumed alcohol in the past 30 days has dropped from 71% in 2009 to 53% in 2019. That’s up 3% from 2016 and is 17% percentage points higher than the national average, but it represents vast improvement.

“That is why annually we have a student conference at the high school that is designed by students on very serious topics, some of which are substance related, and have professionals from our community come in,” Hood said. “We talk about driving under the influence, liability of being the designated driver, all of these different things that are related to these topics because we know that Mountain Brook students respond well to information.”

Of Mountain Brook students who said they have used illicit drugs, 43% reported using alcohol, 30% reported using e-cigarettes, 13% reported using marijuana, 11% reported using cigarettes, 2% reported using prescription drugs and 1% reported using opioids.

The survey unveiled that students perceived e-cigarettes to be less harmful than traditional cigarettes, which helps explain the usage gap between them. Hood said she would like to see students harbor as much concern for e-cigarettes as they do cigarettes due to their detrimental health effects.

“It’s a message we’re going to have to continue to share,” Hood said.

So is the importance of mental health.

In the survey, 16% of Mountain Brook students reported having thoughts of suicide, which is on par with the national average. Among Mountain Brook seniors, 23.6% said they have thought about suicide.

The 6% of Mountain Brook students who said they have attempted suicide, however, is below the 8% national average.

“I think in every community, not just Mountain Brook, this is a concern,” Hood said. “Why it is a very significant concern for Mountain Brook is because all of these are statistics that represent people, and they’re people that are part of our community and we want to make sure that people know where to get help.”

Hood said Mountain Brook’s suicide data has stayed consistent over the years and will continue to be addressed by the school system.

Students in grades seven to 12 attend a mental health training session at the outset of every school year, Hood said. About five years ago, Mountain Brook also started using a service called Gaggle to monitor emails and documents created by school-issued student accounts. If any communication suggests suicidal ideation, Hood said, the school system gets a phone call regardless of the day or time.

School officials, in turn, notify families.

“We do appreciate that system because we do know that it has saved kids’ lives,” Hood said.

In another part of the survey, Mountain Brook students overwhelmingly reported feeling safe at school. That includes in bathrooms, buses, parking lots, hallways, classrooms, gymnasiums and at events. More than 90% of respondents said they felt safe in every school environment.

“Our goal is that we want 100% of kids to say they feel safe, so we have done a lot of work as far as — and this is a tribute to our school board and [Superintendent] Dr. [Dicky] Barlow — committing resources to our school system to make sure that our buildings are secure, that students are a part of that keeping-our-building-safe process. We’ve done a lot of student education.”

Hood was set to discuss all survey results with counselors and administrators at the junior high and high school in late January. They’ll use the data to shape their priorities moving forward.

“We’re committed to constantly improve and grow and learn and educate because we know how important the academics are, but we also know that these things are the things that are going to impact their lives in a tremendous, tremendous way, far after school has finished,” Hood said.