Teens Suicide

Teen suicide happens, sadly, too frequently in our country. One of the biggest reasons is a lack of communication after one happens. The problem is there is no where for teens to go and feel completely comfortable to talk about their feelings or even about their friend.

A little over a week ago one of my friends shot himself. It was a really big shock. After I was told, I was followed by one of the councilors while trying to find my friend. He asked: “Who else should we contact?” and “How do you think we can comfort others?”. He’s the trained professional, why should I know those things?

All the while I’m trying to register the fact that my friend had committed suicide, and deal with it myself. My group of friends were sitting at a table, being ignored at first by the five councilors in the room, then one of the councilors comes to our table and sits down. We were kind of talking about Ryan (the friend who committed suicide) and the councilor kept trying to make it seem like he wasn’t a good person, or he was really depressed. The fact is he wasn’t depressed. But the guy couldn’t get that, so all of us slowly left the room. There was no reason for us to stay he wasn’t listening, or understanding what we were saying. We felt ignored.

When one suicide happens, studies show that more are likely to follow. But why? I think it’s the lack of trust, and willing to listen from a neutral point of view, or the point of view of someone who’s been through the same pain, people. I was having a hard time dealing with it. It was hard to talk about Ryan in past tense. Then my mom introduced me to this girl she knew who had had 6 friends commit suicide. She really helped, because she’d been through the same thing, and since she didn’t know anyone, or anything about Ryan or my friends she gave me the neutral point of view.

If we had places where you could go and people who had been through the same thing where there to listen and talk about what you’re going through with you, there’d be less suicide. Because it’d give you a way to see that things get better and it’s not always going to hurt as much. If there were more ways to communicate after someone commits suicide, there’d be fewer suicides. It’d make it easier to see it’s not worth it to give up.