As local organizations begin suicide prevention programs, new data shows the suicide rate on Vashon apparently dropped last year after a small spike in 2013.

In 2013, there were six deaths by suicide on Vashon, raising concerns among many islanders. Preliminary information, however, indicates that three islanders died by suicide in 2014.

According to information provided by Public Health — Seattle & King County, there were between zero and three suicides on Vashon each year between 1990 and 2012. In 2013, there were six suicides on Vashon, and three of them were people between ages 15 and 24.

While the state Department of Health (DOH) won’t release official statistics on suicides in 2014 until this summer, Jennifer Sabel, an Injury and Violence Prevention Epidemiologist at DOH, said the state has a record of two suicides on Vashon last year, one in August and one in October.

Lisa Devereau, who runs Island Funeral Service and handles most but not all deaths on Vashon, said she knows of those two suicides — one of which was a 25-year-old man — as well as one more in late November. Sabel said the state likely doesn’t have record of that suicide yet because it was late in the year.

“I guess I would say it is back down in the normal range of what we would expect,” Sabel said of the data for 2014. She said that the small increase in suicides in 2013 would be considered an anomaly or a random cluster unless Vashon continued to see higher numbers. She also said that because the six deaths is still a very small number, it would not be considered statistically significant or above the normal suicide rate.

“It’s a relatively small population and a relatively rare event there, so it’s really hard to get something statistically significant out of six cases,” she said.

Meanwhile, the Vashon School District has moved forward on plans to begin a new suicide prevention program, which has been bolstered by the Vashon Alliance to Reduce Substance Abuse (VARSA).

VARSA, which is funded by a grant from the state Department of Social and Human Services (DSHS), recently garnered two additional DSHS grants related to mental health and suicide prevention among teens. The group will now partner with the school district, its fiscal sponsor, to spend up to $20,000 on mental health education and $25,000 on suicide prevention programs by September. Several similar groups across the state applied for the grants and all received funding.

Lisa Bruce, VARSA’s coordinator, said she believes addressing mental health issues among teens will also help prevent substance abuse. There is a chance the state will offer the grants again next school year.

“I think it will help us have more of an impact in the community and be more involved with what’s really going on here on a greater scale,” Bruce said, “not just targeting alcohol and drug reduction, but some of the reasons why they’re using, and reach the whole person more.”

The state grant can fund specific programs and activities, such as mental health and suicide training for school staff and other adults, town hall events led by mental health experts, a peer-to-peer support program at Vashon High School and new mental health curriculum for all grade levels, some written for the classroom and some designed to be used in small groups. The funding will be managed by Yvonne Monique Aviva, who was recently hired by the school district to manage the schools’ new suicide prevention program.

Superintendent Michael Soltman, who has stressed that he doesn’t want to see one more young person die by suicide, said that the VARSA grants will be able to fund some of the goals that he and Aviva already outlined. Other parts of their plan won’t be funded by the grant, however, and the district still plans to request that the Vashon Schools Foundation fundraise up to $50,000 a year for the next three years to support the program. The foundation’s funding will begin in September, Soltman said, so the VARSA grant will help the schools get a head start on some of its programs.

“There’s a lot to do,” he said. “This year we’re using the grant money and using a little curriculum money to get started. When we really start up in the fall, we’ll need the full funding.”