Long, white folding tables stretch across Aspen High School's cafeteria at 8 a.m. on a recent winter morning, covered with cardboard boxes displaying over 600 doughnuts.
A group of students is handing out the glazed treats to their peers to raise awareness about a new club on campus: the Aspen Hope Squad.
Students in the club are trying to prevent teen suicide among their peers. They're trained to recognize the warning signs of suicide and connect classmates who need help with trusted adults.
Today was “Donut quit” day, one in a series of activations at the high school for Aspen Hope Week. Audrey Woodrow is one of the Hope Squad members and hopes the weeklong program will draw attention to the issue plaguing her school district.
“I think mental health is really stigmatized here,” Woodrow said. “It’s OK for you to struggle. I think everyone struggles with mental health in one way or another.”
The AHS Hope Squad started two years ago and is funded with the City of Aspen’s tobacco tax dollars. It’s also part of a network of “hope squads” across the country.
The original program began in Provo, Utah, where school administrators searched for a peer-to-peer model that would help reduce teen suicides. They documented cases where kids at risk of self-harm confided in their friends before reaching out to an adult.
School district officials surveyed the student body about which of their classmates were kind and easy to talk to, and those students were invited to be a part of the Hope Squad and trained to intervene when their peers showed some of the warning signs of suicide.
Aspen has the same model.
“It's just nice to know that we’re people that our friends, or people we know in the school, think of when they think of someone who can help them,” Woodrow said.
Student role
Woodrow and roughly 30 other members of the Hope Squad have been trained through QPR Institute’s method to look out for people who might be struggling — who are sitting alone or otherwise might need someone to talk to.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Colorado teens struggle with suicide at above average rates. The state has the fifth-highest suicide mortality rate in the country among 15- to 19-year-olds.
The students’ biggest responsibility is knowing when to contact a teacher for help.
Josh Berro is a counselor at Aspen High School and helped start the Hope Squad in 2022, but he’s wary of putting too much pressure on the students involved.
“We're not asking these kids to be psychologists,” Berro said. “The main point is to get these kids to come to an adult. Because the adults are the professionals who can help with suicide detection, ideation — those kinds of things. We just want the kids to be a bridge.”
He said one of the biggest goals is to have students help identify which of their classmates need support, so they can reach more kids who are at risk.
Caleb Seward is a senior and a member of the Aspen Hope Squad.
He said growing up in a resort town like Aspen can present unique challenges, and he often sees his friends struggling.
“I see a lot of people closing themselves off, isolating themselves, or maybe just not being the person that they want to be,” Seward said. “I have seen some of my peers, and I see how some of them live, and it's not necessarily the greatest.”
As a counselor, Berro has seen how the "paradise paradox" can manifest — how growing up full-time in a vacation town isn’t always glamorous.
“There's so much wealth, but there's also poverty,” Berro said. “The seasonal depression that happens, the transient nature of the town — of people moving in, people moving out — I think that kids really struggle with that.”
Program effectiveness
The Hope Squad is a new strategy to mobilize kids and strive for a healthier community. It hasn’t resulted in any referrals so far, and Berro isn’t convinced it will work.
Some students have complained that Hope Squad club members are only joining the club to put something on their resumes.
A study from the National Institutes of Health said peer-based interventions can provide additional care for patients who don’t receive support through traditional mental health channels. However, it’s unclear how effective these models are at addressing suicidal risk, and the NIH said more research needs to be done on this type of programming.
In the meantime, Berro said the problem is too big to ignore — that they have to try something.
“We just have to,” Berro said. “That's just the way it works, and if it's not good and it doesn't work, then OK. We'll try something new.”
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, call the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline for support.
