By Jim Walsh | East Valley Tribune
With only a Gilbert and a Mesa senator voting against it, a teen suicide prevention bill was overwhelmingly passed by the State Senate last week.
The bill, which moves to the House this week, requires that all school personnel dealing with students in grades 6-12 receive training every three years on how to recognize the early warning signs of teen suicide.
Unbeknownst to the Senate, a Mesa mother underscored the need for that training a day earlier, Feb. 26, as she told the Mesa Public Schools Governing Board about her 14-year-old son’s suicide in August 2017.
Jennifer Stewart told the board that she and her husband were concerned that their son Braxton had been a “kind, happy and gifted young man with a bright future” and that shortly after beginning his freshman year at Red Mountain High School, “his grades began to drop, and he quit turning in his assignments several times.”
“I eventually reached out to his teachers for help and advice,” she said. “The response I received from his teachers, ‘this is the typical response of a gifted 14-year-old boy during puberty and it’s nothing to worry about.’ A few weeks later, he ended his life.”
