It’s silly to get sentimental about an old building, especially one that has seen as much misery as this one.

But ever since the packing started in earnest in the newsroom of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which is leaving its downtown building and heading two blocks east to smaller digs, I’ve been having flashbacks.

I remember walking into the imposing six-story, brick-and-stone building as a 21-year-old intern.

Like many visitors, I paused to read the Pulitzer platform, engraved into the stone lobby wall. Joseph Pulitzer, whose family still owned the paper when I got here, wrote it on April 10, 1907: “I know that my retirement will make no difference in its cardinal principles, that it will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.”

It all looked grand to my young eyes. On the fifth floor, there were rows of Atex computers with reporters crammed into the newsroom. Surrounded by grizzled editors and veteran reporters, I got a crash course on breaking news and making deadline. It was amazing, but I didn’t plan to stay. I had lived in the largest cities in America, and I had no intention of coming back to this random, small town in the Midwest.

I was hired back as a news reporter two years later.

This time, I walked through the front doors more confident in my Express business jacket. I figured I would stay a couple of years and move on. I was set up on a blind date with my future husband right around that two-year mark. When we met, he had worked at his current company for 10 years. I gave him a look.

“That’s weird. No one stays at the same place that long,” I said.

This is my 21st year walking into this same building. I’ve spent nights here and worked every single holiday shift in those early years. In the meantime, I’ve gotten married and had two children, who first visited the newsroom as babies in strollers and now could drive here. A colleague who worked the weekend general assignment shifts with me reminded me about the time an editor wanted to send me out to cover a biker gang rally when I was nine months pregnant.

There have been people shot in the close vicinity of this building, a former colleague carjacked in the parking lot, and people trapped in the elevator on more than one occasion. Those breakdown-prone elevators provided an adventurous start to each day, and the dark walk to the far parking lot after each shift was a daring way to end it.

I’ve wandered every floor of this space, from the presses in the subfloor basement to the executive suites at the top. Packing up my desk was like excavating the past: old notebooks filled with interviews. A paystub from 2004. A pin-back button a reader made featuring a phrase from a column I had written. A stack of thank-you notes from students I had led on a tour of the place. A picture of my daughter with her elementary school newspaper club when they visited. A note she had written on a scrap of paper and left inside my desk, likely on one of the days when school was out or a babysitter couldn’t make it.

At least 23 of my former colleagues have since died. Dozens have taken buyouts, others have been laid off. I’ve spent more time in this building than I did in my childhood home of 18 years. I’ve been tied to this place longer than I’ve been married. Many of my co-workers and I -- those who remain -- we’ve grown up here. We have covered major events that happened around us and did our best to share them with our community.

It makes sense that we develop an attachment to familiar places filled with memories, especially one with as much institutional history as this place. I could have filed this column from home, but I wanted to come to the newsroom on its last day at 900 N. Tucker Blvd.

I ate a bag of Cheetos and fruit snacks the marketing department gave us in our moving bags, a few gummy bears from a fellow columnist’s desk and a piece of blueberry cake an editor had made. I wrote a sentimental farewell to a crummy old building that I loved despite its dangers, its moody air conditioning system, stained carpet and dingy stairwells.

I felt like lingering at my desk, but it was time to move on.

Six year-olds have told Dr. Anne Glowinski that they don’t want to live anymore.

It’s her job to figure out what they mean by that, and how to best help them.

Glowinski is a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the Washington University School of Medicine, and specializes in treating depression and suicidal behaviors. She is also working on ways to empower front-line providers, such as pediatricians, to deal with the alarming findings from recent research on American youth and suicide.

Researchers reported this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association that the youth suicide rate is the highest it has been in nearly two decades. There’s been a sharp rise among older teen boys and an increase in girls aged 10 to 14. Between 2009 and 2017, rates of depression among kids ages 14 to 17 increased by more than 60%, another study found. The number of children sent to hospital emergency departments for suicide attempts and suicidal ideation doubled over a nine-year period ending in 2016, according to a study published in the Journal of American Medicine-Pediatrics.

Clearly, there is a crisis in mental health among America’s children and teens. And no one is exactly sure what is fueling it.

So, what can be done about it?

Glowinski shared some ideas: All pediatricians should screen patients for depression. And they need to be more comfortable prescribing medication and treatment for children who need it. As the rates of depression have risen, the rate of treatment has not, she said.

Next, doctors should ask about lethal means of suicide in the home. More young people in America die of suicide by guns than homicide by guns. If there is a gun in the home, the risk of suicide increases. This is a public health issue, not a political one. It also makes sense that adding more therapists in schools is likely to save far more lives than arming teachers with guns.

Lastly, when doctors see a depressed or anxious child, they should also screen for parental psychopathology.

“You will do a world of good for the child by treating the parent,” Glowinski said.

Unfortunately, she says, there can be several barriers, both external and internal, standing between a child and treatment. External barriers can include whether there is an available provider nearby, whether the child has health care coverage and a supportive parent who can afford it.

Internal barriers involve the persistent stigma in seeking medical treatment. Too many people are still afraid of using medicines to treat depression, anxiety and other disorders.

“When it comes to depression, it can be a very isolating illness,” she said. Children will manifest symptoms in different ways. Some act out. Others suffer in silence.

Jessie Vance, supervisor of Provident Crisis Services in St. Louis, says alienation, isolation, bullying and feeling unsupported by an adult can all increase suicide risk. Vance says parents shouldn’t be afraid to ask a child about any changes in mood and behavior that they notice.

In the case of a young child, parents can ask questions like:

Have you been having thoughts of going to sleep and not waking up?

Have you been wishing you weren’t here anymore, or wishing that you could disappear?

Vance said that Provident’s crisis hotline has received calls from children as young as 10 years old. The hotline also handles a number of calls from parents worried about their children and not sure what to do.

The idea of young children wanting to kill themselves is shocking to adults, because it goes against our very notion of childhood. But we have to be willing to face the reality of the challenges facing children today.

“It you have major depression, if you are 8 or 38, your risk for having suicide ideation is the same,” Glowinski said.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-8255

Jenni Mahoney noticed one of her middle schoolers was having a rough day. She pulled out her stationery and wrote her an encouraging note.

The message she wanted to share was simple: “I see you. You’re doing good things.”

She wanted to cheer up her student with a little handwritten pep talk. The girl didn’t say anything to Mahoney, an eighth grade English language arts teacher in a suburban St. Louis school district. But Mahoney noticed the girl kept the note in the front of her binder for the rest of the year.

That was almost three years ago. Mahoney started writing notes to other students if she saw one of them having a bad day. The small gesture seemed to make a difference. At the start of the next school year, she was thinking about ways to incorporate more praise and positive feedback into her teaching.

Mahoney resolved to write two to three notes for each of her students throughout the year whenever good behavior or effort caught her eye. She has 60 students. Would she really be able to write 180 notes, on top of all the regular teaching, planning and grading?

For the past two years, she’s made it happen by incorporating the practice into a weekly routine. She picks three students from each ELA block, writing nine notes weekly. Additionally, at the end of the school year, all 60 students get an individual note she writes over the course of four days when the students are taking the state-required standardized tests.

“I follow the same format,” she explained. She begins by focusing on specific positive traits she sees in the student and noting the things he or she does well. She tells them she enjoys having them in her class and mentions something specific from their time in her class.

One note might say, “I can tell you are really loyal” or “kind-hearted.” Another might include something the student is working hard to improve. The letters at the end of the eighth grade year also include encouraging words about starting high school in the fall.

It seems like an incredible amount of extra work for a teacher to take on. I asked if it’s been worth it.

“I think the payoff is huge,” she said. It helps develop her relationships with all the students over the year.

“They see that I know them,” she said, “and that I enjoy having them in class.”

This message is especially powerful for students who don’t typically get that kind of recognition or reinforcement at school. Parenting experts say the strategy of praising good behavior is a powerful way to change children’s actions and attitudes. 

But this is middle school. Surely there are some difficult students who are disruptive or rude or slackers. How does she find something praiseworthy for the students who chronically misbehave?

“I always have to think about the positive traits they have,” she explained. She might consider the friends they have. Sometimes, she compliments a great sense of humor or how a student gets along with his or her friends. “It can be hard sometimes, but I always find something.”

She doesn’t say anything to the students when she gives them the notes. She simply leaves them on their desks. Most of the time, they won’t say anything in response to what she’s written. For middle school students, it can be uncomfortable if a teacher approaches them in person. Genuine praise said aloud might be greeted with an eye roll or cause embarrassment in front of their peers.

“This is a quick way to tell them without making it uncomfortable or weird for them,” Mahoney said. Even if they don’t acknowledge it directly, she notices that many students keep the note in their binders. She overhears students ask one another if they’ve gotten a note yet. And a handful of times, students have written her kind letters in return.

Those are the things that motivate her during that marathon week of letter-writing near the end of the year.

“I’ll write 10 at a time, then take a break and do something else,” she said. “My hand hurts for sure, by the end.”

She’s found a way to teach an important lesson without saying a word.