Suicide

Youths no longer view suicide as taboo subject

By Martha Irvine, Associated Press

The topic of suicide makes many people squirm. It’s something we’ve been told we’re not supposed to talk about. If you speak it, someone might do it.

But there’s a growing conversation about suicide that’s happening on college campuses, in high school auditoriums and online — even among youths some might think are too young to consider suicide. The hope is that a public discussion between young people and the teachers and counselors could inspire peers in distress to get help.

”It’s kind of like the sex talk with your children. I think that we should have that talk,” said Brittany Lang-staff, 14, a ninth-grader in Georgetown, Ontario. She’s on the girls editorial board of New Moon Girl Media, a magazine with an online site aimed at teen and ”’tween” girls that recently took on the topic of suicide. Features on the site include advice from experts about how to deal with suicidal thoughts…

Sixty years ago, World Health Organization statistics show that suicide was much more common among the elderly. Since then, it has shifted to become a much more common cause of death among younger populations — and the third leading cause of death among 10- to 14-year-olds in this country by 1997.

In a Centers for Disease Control survey of high school students from 2007,  researchers found that 16 %  had seriously considered suicide in the months preceding the survey. Similarly, a University of Minnesota study released this year found nearly 15 %  of teens think they’re going to die young, leading many to attempt suicide, use drugs and engage in other unsafe behaviors.

Bryce Mackie, 21, a student at Columbia College in Chicago, knows all about that. In high school, he made a film about his own experience with bipolar disorder and suicidal thoughts. He first showed the film to his parents and teachers and ended up getting help, and now speaks to other young people across the country about his experience.

”I’ll have seven or eight kids after a speech come up to me and, for most of them, this is the first time they’ve talked about it,” said Mackie, whose film Eternal High has won awards for helping destigmatize mental illness.

”They had no clue that anyone else felt that way,” he added. ”And even if they did, their teachers weren’t talking about it. Their friends weren’t talking about it.”

http://www.ohio.com/news/nation/63830307.html

Published on Friday, Oct 09, 2009

.