Of the over 10,000 tips Michigan's school safety program OK2Say received in 2025, more than 3,500 were related to serious mental health concerns, making it the most frequently reporting tip of the year.
OK2Say offers students a 24-7 hotline, where they can submit confidential reports of potential threats to someone in their school's safety or well being. Last year, the hotline received a record breaking 11,671 tips. The 2025 total decreased slightly to 10,777 tips, the first time it's gone down in the last five years.
The tips are processed through a network of students, parents, school personnel, community mental health service programs, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and law enforcement officials.
Mary Gager Drew, the department specialist for the state's Office of School Safety, said last year's numbers were unusual. Typically, the most common category of tips the hotline gets are instances of bullying.
"For the past three years, bullying has been our number one tip category," Drew explained. "That's our first time in our history it was our number one category, followed by the suicide threat."
Largest number of tips by category in 2025:
- Anxiety, depression, stress or harassment (other) – 1,816 tips
- Suicide threats – 1,767 tips
- Bullying – 1,576 tips
- Drugs – 1,153 tips
- Sexual assault, misconduct or exploitation – 1,036 tips
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, every year, about 142,000 Michigan adolescents experience a major depressive episode and nearly 90,000 have serious thoughts of suicide.
OK2Say officials said one of the reasons these categories took the leading spot is because teens are becoming more aware of what it looks like to struggle with mental health.
Part of that awareness comes from the program's in-school presentations, which they say has also impacted the number of tips OK2Say gets every year since being brought back into schools in 2021.
Peter Hoffman is OK2Say's program specialist. He said more than anything, the program continues to get thousands of tips every year because students know they can trust them to help.
"We have established a safe space for students to come and let us know when something is wrong and believe and have faith that we will help them, to make it better or at least help them get help for the problems that they have," Hoffman explained. "And that is something that I think is amongst our most positive outcomes and amongst our most positive impact."
Students can talk with the OK2Say team by phone, text, email, their website or by using the OK2Say app. Both Drew and Hoffman said they hope students continue to help their peers and themselves by submitting tips.
"You don't have to have all the details," Drew said. "Just trust that gut. If your intent is to help somebody, submit the tip."
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