Loading ...Suicide is the second leading cause of death among teenagers in Canada,and the start of school is a particularly high-risk time for vulnerable youth. This week,The Globe and Mail presents a special series confronting an agonizing enigma. Amid their pain,victims’ families are defying stigma and bringing the issue to light as never before.
In Ottawa and the surrounding rural area,a shocking number of families are still trying to understand why their children made similarly terrible choices and what they could have done to prevent it. In June last year,six young people died at their own hands in small towns southwest of the capital – stoic,old-fashioned places where most parents still worry far more about kids driving home in the dark from bush parties than about problems like depression or anxiety. At least two more suicides followed last September.
The victims were mostly young men,some in their early 20s,current and former students. None of them knew each other,at least not well. This seemingly random scattering of loss points to the complexity of suicide,which is not confined to a “type” or any particular circumstances.
By the time the suicide of 14-year-old Daron Richardson,the daughter of Ottawa Senators assistant coach Luke Richardson,made headlines …,communities were scrambling to prevent more deaths,without really knowing how.
Teenage suicide remains a maddening enigma. Though rates in Canada have declined since the early 1980s,it is still the second-leading cause of death among teenagers,after car accidents. Numbers are small;in 2007,the most recent year with available data,there were 218 suicides of people between 10 and 19. But the idea that even the smallest percentage of teens could feel so hopeless and bereft makes families fear what their own children may be concealing,holed up in their bedrooms with Facebook.
The start and end of school years may be particularly vulnerable times for at-risk youth,some studies say. Just this week,in Mississauga,a 16-year-old boy killed his best friend,in an apparent act of unrequited love,and then jumped off an overpass. Last weekend,in Buffalo,N.Y.,14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer killed himself after years of bullying;months earlier,he had posted a video to the It Gets Better anti-bullying (and anti-suicide) website,describing the taunts he had faced. He urged listeners,“Just love yourself,and you’re set.” He was found dead outside his home on Sunday morning.
And then there is the story of 17-year-old Jesse Graham,who happily posed in Ray-Bans and black tie for his Grade 12 prom in Balderson,near Perth,Ont.,then decided,days later,to hang himself in the dark.
According to University of Ottawa psychologist Darcy Santor,at least 91 per cent of suicide victims are suffering from some form of mental illness at the time of their deaths,though it may not have been diagnosed. The danger rises exponentially the more risk factors are present:depression,anxiety,alcohol abuse,bullying,social isolation,learning disabilities and often,at the root,shame. But even more so than adults,adolescents with mental illness face long waiting lists,a shortage of psychiatric beds and are often misdiagnosed.
After all,what teenager doesn’t slam doors and keep secrets,sleep too much or too little,fail tests,and suffer meanness or heartbreak? Large numbers of high-school students also say in surveys that they ruminate,however fleetingly,about suicide. So what makes the few who do take their own lives so different,and how might they be found,and saved? If society could figure this out,the benefits would be vast,for every teenager who has teetered on the edge and the families they would leave behind.
As a vital starting point,some survivors are coming out and talking about it – Daron Richardson’s father and her mother,Stephanie,went public immediately after her death. They and several other families also willingly shared their experiences and reflections with The Globe and Mail. In the face of the stigma that has surrounded suicide from the days when it was classed as a criminal offence,families are beginning to defy the long-held fear that simply saying the word will cause more deaths to occur,like a cough spreading a cold.
In Carleton Place,Ont.,this month,a fundraising run was held in the name of a teenage suicide victim named Brett Pearson,who died in 2006,and a band played in a field outside the high school afterward so people could linger – an event hard to imagine even five years ago.
“We’re not going to sit in silence,” said Jesse Graham’s mom,Shelly,who joined the run. “That’s why kids are dying.”
Edited from:
Teen suicide:‘We’re not going to sit in silence’
Erin Anderssen
Globe and Mail
September 24,2011
