About us:
Our Mission
To meet the challenge of youth suicide in Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico through lasting solutions that encourage resiliency, courage, connection and hope.
Vision Statement
We envision every young person in our community building the capacity to manage life’s challenges with strong connections to peers, family, school, and community.
Our vision arises from that which we all know to be true: youth flourish when supported by strong networks of care.
Core Values
The Sky Center is committed to a holistic approach to reduce the risks of youth suicide. Our core values of hope and love are the foundation of our work, guiding and focusing every aspect of our programs, connections, and partnerships.
Through innovative and research-based approaches, we practice the core values of:
- Hope, building resiliency, facilitating stories of strength, courage, and recovery, and continually striving to learn and grow as an organization
- Love, through inclusivity, cultural sensitivity, listening, paying attention, setting clear boundaries, living with integrity, and offering kindness
We embody these core values by sustaining ourselves and our work with practices of self-care, and strong collective bonds.
Suicide Statistics
The Need for Suicide Prevention and Intervention Services
- Nationally among children aged 10 to 14, death by suicide is now more common than death from traffic accidents (National Center for Health Statistics, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2015).
- New Mexico ranks FIRST in the nation for youth suicide ages 15-19. (CDC Wonder, 2017)
- 40% of Santa Fe County high school students felt persistent sadness or hopelessness; 17% seriously considered suicide; and almost 10% attempted suicide in the past twelve months (NM Youth Risk and Resiliency Survey 2017).
- 40% of LGBTQ youth (including more than half of transgender and non-binary youth) report seriously considering suicide in the past 12 months (National Survey on LGBTQ Mental Health, Trevor Project, 2019).
These statistics do not reveal the true extent of the problem: the devastating loss of promise and hopefulness in a young life that is impossible to quantify. Unfortunately, suicide is a largely ignored issue until it is brought to the forefront by the incomprehensible death of a child.