Trigger warning: This story mentions suicide. Call or text 988 for support if you are experiencing thoughts of suicide or self-harm.
A small slip of paper sits on the corner of Palo Alto resident and parent Mare Lucas’ desk. The handwriting is uneven and messy — it belongs to a student, thanking Lucas for speaking up about mental health at a school board meeting. Eight years after losing her son to suicide, the fight to protect other students has not gotten easier, but the note reminds her why her work is important.
Although students at MVHS and other Bay Area schools often discuss academic pressure, they rarely discuss the toll this pressure takes on their mental health. Gunn High School alum ‘25 Kiyon Zebarjadi, who both saw and experienced these impacts at GHS, says this issue and the consequences are rarely talked about in-depth.
“There’s a stigma about using the resources available for mental health,” Zebarjadi said. “I honestly think it comes from a lack of understanding. Personally, I only really became comfortable talking about mental health after I myself had started going to therapy for depression and anxiety.”
However, Lucas says the stigma surrounding mental health discussions extends to parents and families as well. According to a survey conducted by Gallup between March 13 to 20 in 2024, 92% of Gen Z children said it was helpful when their parents talked to them about their mental health.
“When my son was going through some really, really challenging and hard times, I was afraid to let people know what was going on because I thought that they wouldn’t let their kid play with his younger brother,” Lucas said. “People tend to judge families of people who have family members with behavioral health problems. I was very afraid of the impact of people knowing and how that might affect my younger son.”
Everyone assumes that if they’re thinking that they should go, they’re alone in that thinking. But I don’t think that’s true.
— Palo Alto High School junior Dylan Wilson
Lucas does have more hope for younger generations, as she believes talking about mental health has become slightly more normalized, at least compared to the past generation. She believes conversations about mental health are crucial, which is why she herself has been so open about her son’s death, as she believes that not talking about incidents like this sends the message that mental health emergencies should be kept secret. Palo Alto High School junior and Bring Change to Mind member Dylan Wilson agrees with Lucas that dialogue is necessary and has noticed the impacts of a lack of conversations surrounding mental health resources.
“No one is gonna say, ‘Oh, you go to the Wellness Center, you must be depressed,’” Wilson said. “I don’t think anyone is thinking anything negative about the actual resources. It’s just that people don’t really talk about if they go or if they don’t go. Then everyone assumes that if they’re thinking that they should go, they’re alone in that thinking. But I don’t think that’s true.”
Lucas perceives this stigma as a gap between how the school and society tend to handle physical health and how they respond to mental health. After a PAHS student died by suicide, Lucas gave a speech to students and staff at PAHS, urging teachers to give students the same grace for anxiety or depression they would for a physical injury, saying the unintentional double standard keeps teens from opening up about their struggles. Although FUHSD has not had a student die by suicide since 2022, conversations surrounding mental health are still extremely valuable. According to the 2025 CA Healthy Kids Survey, the CDC’s 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey showed that 20.4% of teenagers seriously considered attempting suicide. Lucas says that if a fifth of a school’s population had another life-threatening illness, this lack of urgency would be unimaginable.
Two weeks later, we had a recent graduate do it, and I didn’t have any tears left. I just had anger. And I was like, ‘What are we going to do with this anger?
— Palo Alto resident and parent Mare Lucas
“A student died by suicide right before school started, and I cried for two days,” Lucas said. “Two weeks later, we had a recent graduate do it, and I didn’t have any tears left. I just had anger. And I was like, ‘What are we going to do with this anger?’”
After these suicides, Lucas often heard community members offer “thoughts and prayers.” She grew tired of this mindset and wanted to pursue a more active role in suicide prevention and encourage her community to do the same. As a result, she founded Community Action Group earlier this year with the intent to use this platform to address the mental health issues in her community. But simultaneously, other mental health resources have recently been experiencing cuts, such as Allcove, a youth mental health center in Palo Alto, facing major funding cuts by Santa Clara County. These cuts are in response to President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, which requires the county to make large budget cuts across all departments.
“To cut back any sort of mental health efforts is not the right reaction when we have a youth mental health epidemic on our hands,” Lucas said. “This is a time we have to recognize this epidemic. We have to understand that the world and the United States right now is facing an existential threat, and it’s not a time to pull back, it’s a time to run faster.”
We have to understand that the world and the United States right now is facing an existential threat, and it’s not a time to pull back, it’s a time to run faster.
— Palo Alto resident and parent Mare Lucas
Palo Alto Union High School District’s 2023-2024 California Healthy Kids Survey shows that 6% of students made a plan about how they would die by suicide in the past 12 months. In MVHS’s 2024-2025 California Healthy Kids Survey, 8% of respondents said they had seriously considered suicide in the past 12 months. While 8% is a concerning number, this percentage does show a decline when compared to 13% in 2023 and 9% in 2024. This decline can be attributed to an increase in the percentage of students who feel safe asking for help from an adult at school, showing the importance of teachers and administration in preventing death by suicide. For Zebarjadi, this was evident in his four-year Social Emotional Learning and Functionality cohort, a small group of students that meets for 50 minutes once a week to help students improve their skills in social and emotional learning. While he felt personally supported, he said many of his peers were disengaged when their SELF instructors seemed indifferent to what they shared.
“I think I speak for most of my peers by saying that the collective opinion is that the school administration is not really doing enough,” Zebarjadi said. “More so than just creating some resources and trying to pilot programs, all of which are a step in the right direction and certainly come from a place of good intentions, the necessary change is an entire shift in the culture of the school, and the administration certainly plays a role in what that culture is.”
Zebarjadi’s frustration with the pace of change reflects what Lucas has seen on a wider level. She says that as institutions tend to take action only after harm has already occurred, they are inevitably falling behind. For students, Lucas highlighted simple efforts like lunch clubs encouraging conversations surrounding mental health to benches painted in rainbow colors as a show of solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community. Overall, Lucas says that any show of support to mental health discussions is helpful.
She said students could also receive guidance on how to respond when a friend is struggling and when it’s necessary to involve an adult. In her view, small but intentional community action could add up to make a difference. She believes that regular mental health checkups should be normalized among parents and considered just as essential as a student’s annual physical checkup.
“If what we were doing was working, we wouldn’t be here,” Lucas said. “I want the world to accept that, no, we aren’t doing enough. I wish I felt more confident that the world now was better than it was eight years ago. But I’m not. I’m not sure we have made the progress that we needed to make in nearly a decade. But the reason that I have the strength to continue advocating for this is that I just cannot stand to think of another person in so much pain that they think suicide is the answer. And I feel like I have to do anything I can to try and help lessen that pain and potentially change that outcome.”