Members of the Pascack Valley administration have been in contact with and receiving advice from various organizations since last Sunday, when a student at Pascack Valley decided to take his life.

Jack Farrell, a senior at Pascack Valley High School, committed suicide last Sunday. According to his mother’s Facebook page, he died on Tuesday, having donated his left lung, his kidneys, his pancreas, and his liver to five people in need. His wake was held yesterday from 2-7 p.m., a funeral service following at 7 p.m.. The committal service will be held at 1:30 p.m. today.

According to Superintendent Erik Gundersen, Pascack Valley has used materials from The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) and the Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC) to aid in managing the aftermath of the event. They’ve also either reached out to or have been contacted by West Bergen Mental Health, Rutgers University Behavioral Healthcare, and the Bergen County chapter of the Traumatic Loss Coalition (TLC), which operates through Rutgers.

As a result of the advice from different organizations, the Pascack Valley administration has determined that the best course of action is to avoid addressing the situation on a larger scale.

“I’m not here to say that Jack shouldn’t be talked about. What we’re saying is, when it comes to something bigger and larger, it affects another section of the building,” PV Principal Tom DeMaio said. “You have to approach a loss through suicide a little bit differently because you need to be sensitive to individuals who are struggling emotionally to begin with. We want to be able to honor Jack’s life, but we also need to be careful.”

According to resources on the TLC website, “schools should be aware that adolescents are vulnerable to the risk of suicide contagion” and that “the research literature estimates that once a suicide happens the chances of another death by suicide increases dramatically in the adolescent and young adult population.”

Suicide contagion, as stated on the U.S. Health and Human Services website, is when exposure to suicide through peers or media increases the likelihood of suicide or suicidal behavior. It is most common in adolescents.

“All the research indicates that you don’t make major announcements. That’s why we’ve pushed things through classrooms,” DeMaio said. “You don’t do things in mass. You do things in small groups. That’s the more intimate, the more personal way to deal with this.”

In an attempt to minimize the possibility of suicide contagion, the administration has decided against holding any assemblies or having announcements. According to the CDC, “public eulogies, flying flags at half-mast, and erecting permanent public memorials” may be seen as glorifying the act of suicide rather than grieving the person’s death. Much of the advice the administration received was to address grief in small groups and attempt to maintain a normal school routine.

“The district’s responsibility is to educate. We’re trying to educate as many people as possible on how to best handle the situation,” DeMaio said. “There are going to be a lot of kids in the building that never look at PV the same.”

In lieu of an assembly, students were informed in their classrooms about the counseling available to them. The administration also sent a letter to the exclusively to the parents, asking them to inform their children of the counseling options. Guidance counselors were available to speak with throughout the week, as were counselors at the Wellness Center, which opened at the beginning of this year. Counselors were instructed to check in on classrooms periodically as well. According to Gundersen, counselors from the TLC were also present.

“I would encourage people, if they’re going through grief, to contact an adult they trust: a teacher, an administrator, a guidance counselor,” said Dr. Steve Myers, the school’s psychologist. “We have to all support each other through this.”

The advice to maintain a normal schedule and keep small groups led the administration to decide to switch Wednesday’s schedule from a block day to a normal day. By switching the administration attempted to balance a normal schedule with the advice to keep small groups, which PV’s Pascack Period would have hindered.

“We struggled in how to keep a normal schedule going but trying to keep a smaller group supported atmosphere going,” DeMaio said. “We felt that having a large block of time that is unsupported and unstructured was, though in our normal course, not productive.”

The school will have Pascack Period this week. The administration has also been talking directly with several of Farrell’s friends and members of the senior class to advise them in moving forward.

“We got pockets of people wanting to do something,” DeMaio said. “Nobody is trying to stifle that. But what we’ve been doing is trying to guide them in what is appropriate and what is not appropriate.”

The administration intends to increase suicide awareness and prevention. According to DeMaio, they plan to cooperate with the senior class in achieving this goal.

The senior class recently began participating in a campaign from the The Society for the Prevention of Teen Suicide, which aims to “reduce the number of youth suicides and attempted suicides by encouraging public awareness through the development and promotion of educational training programs.” The hashtag #saveteens, along with pictures of members of the senior class holding a poster that reads “You Are Not Alone,” has surfaced on various social media accounts.

“This is about trying to get everybody to understand that everybody is different,” DeMaio said. “What we’re trying to do is say ‘Hey we’re all in this together. It’s all about loving one another and supporting one another.’ We’re just trying to do our best to make sure everyone in this building knows that they are loved and supported. That’s PV.”