RENO -- Teachers should be trained to detect signs that students are considering suicide, several legislators said Friday.

Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, said she was horrified that the Department of Education does not require teachers to take special courses or receive training in combating suicide.

A recent study shows that 20 percent of Nevada students contemplate suicide every year, and 11 percent actually try to kill themselves. Leslie said teachers must prepare themselves to detect signs and get help for their students.

"This is such a serious problem," Leslie said during a meeting of the Legislature's Subcommittee to Study Suicide Prevention.

Her concerns were echoed by Sen. Ann O'Connell, R-Las Vegas, and Assemblywoman Debbie Smith, D-Sparks.

"It is the most critical crisis we have in the state, I believe," said O'Connell, chairwoman of the subcommittee.

Nevada ranks first in the nation in suicide. Any recommendations the subcommittee supports in meetings later this spring would require approval by the Legislature next year.

In past hearings, O'Connell said experts reported the suicide rate among senior citizens dropped when they began to exercise.

O'Connell questioned if fewer students would contemplate suicide if they exercised more or had required gym classes.

Keith Rheault, deputy state school superintendent, said exercise is widely believed to reduce suicidal tendencies. But in his research he found no link between exercise and suicide reduction.

Rheault reported results of his department's 2001 Nevada Youth Risk Survey.

This survey, he said, showed that in the average 30-student class, one in five contemplates suicide and one in nine actually attempts suicide every year.

"To me that is alarming," Rheault said. "I wasn't aware there was such a high number of students considering suicide."

While some teachers might balk at a requirement they be trained in suicide detection, Rheault said his department could make it a priority. Suicide prevention might be incorporated into existing professional training that teachers receive during the school year, he said.

As bad as the suicide problem is in urban Nevada areas, rural areas have a worse problem, said Marie Boutte, a cultural anthropologist at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Boutte did an extended study on suicide in White Pine County, looking at records from 1950 to 1990.

She said rural Nevada has only 18 percent of the Nevada population, but 28 percent of all suicides.

In her White Pine County study, she found more than 90 percent of the 110 suicide victims were male.

There tends to be a code among male ranchers and miners that when they no longer can perform their duties they should be put down like a worn-out horse, she said.

Boutte illustrated her point by reading a suicide note left by an elderly rancher who had spent his life hunting and tending to animals.

"He put down old and sick animals so when he got old and sick he put himself down," she said.

Rural males are reluctant to seek professional help for depression, while females are active in their communities.

"I would see women at the community centers, the senior centers and in church," she said. "Women in rural Nevada have a much stronger social network."

Rural Nevadans are accepting of suicide, believing that what other people do is not their business, Boutte said. But in rural Nevada, as elsewhere, she said they are disturbed by teen-age suicide.

Rather than just gathering statistics about student behavior, Boutte said professionals must go into the schools and interview students in detail about their feelings.

"I don't think we really understand well the culture of teen-agers," she said.

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