Survey says: North Dakota students feel hopeless.

The national Youth Risk Behavior Survey results for North Dakota show students who claimed to have attempted suicide has increased to 14 percent, from 12 percent in 2013.

Also, electronic bullying increased to 19 percent and reported feelings of hopelessness “hit a decade high of nearly 29 percent among high schoolers,” according to the Grand Forks Herald.

Those statistics have been on the rise since 2005.

The biennial survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention involved a random selection of 2,100 students from 61 North Dakota public schools, and covered topics like smoking, texting and driving, and drinking in general—all of which have decreased.

North Dakota Superintendent of Public Instruction Kirsten Baesler said the bullying and hopelessness stats should serve as a call to action.

“We really need to decide what we can do as a school system and as a state to make sure our students are feeling engaged with life around them, make sure they are feeling hopeful about their future and drilldown into what is causing them to feel hopeless,” she said.

The superintendent noted that the state has a bullying policy, but it will take a cultural shift to make a bigger impact in schools.

“Obviously, that policy is not working,” Baesler said. “Our students need to know that school is the safest place they can go to.”

While some administrators pointed to progress schools have made on issues like smoking or distracted driving, others pointed out that developing relationships in the community is critical to addressing bullying and suicide.

“We have to extend beyond the classroom,” Grafton Public Schools Superintendent Darren Albrecht told the Herald.

Four Winds Community School Superintendent Jeff Olson agreed.

“It isn’t just a teacher or administrator issue,” he said. “It’s an everybody issue.”

A report by the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture points to a broader cultural trend driving the issues in North Dakota and elsewhere.

The Vanishing Center of American Democracy  published in 2016 found that “despite . . . an abundance of admiration and patriotism, the mood in the nation is not positive.

“Indeed, less than 5 percent of all respondents believe that America is ‘strongly improving.’ Instead, half of all Americans believe it is in decline, some (26%) believe it is ‘strongly declining’ and the rest (23%) believe it is moderately declining.”

The Jubilee Centre for Character and Citizenship offers one way to help students assess their stress and work through it by understanding how it fits into their moral framework and influences their character.