Breaking the silence about teen suicide
WELLESLEY
THE RETROSPECTIVE slide show was the sort we associate with such rites of passage as graduations and 21st birthday celebrations: the towheaded preschooler opening his toys on Christmas morning, the rambunctious boy swan-diving into a lake, the poised young man delivering the high school valedictory speech.
The camera invariably caught its subject bathed in sunlight, his face radiant, and his future a ribbon of promise in that reflected light. Shadows and cloudy days stake no claim in the pages of our children's photo albums.
But it was the strains of "Stairway to Heaven" not "Happy Birthday" that filled the Unitarian Universalist sanctuary last Wednesday morning as this small, suburban town gathered to say goodbye for the fifth time in three years to a teenager lost to apparent suicide. It was the second such funeral this year.
"Bewildered" was the best the minister could muster to describe the communal confusion that attended the news of yet another adolescent's self-annihilation. As a stage of this very particular brand of grief, bewilderment is a giant step beyond shock but only a baby step closer toward understanding.
Silence gets in our way.
Suicide remains the sorrow that still struggles to speak its name. Unless a suicidal youth stages a spectacular rampage that kills others as well as himself - think Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech last April or Robert Hawkins last Wednesday at an Omaha shopping mall - we rely on euphemism to smooth the sharp edges of a "sudden" and "unexpected" death. Faced with the choice between candor and compassion, many newspapers, including this one, shy away from identifying victims of suicide.
It is hard to know who is protected by such policies. Mom and Dad know how their beloved child died. Sister and brother know, too. Within hours of the suicides of each of the five teenagers here, the cause of death had circulated widely. Their teachers and classmates, their neighbors and friends do not mourn them less for the way in which they left this world.
Celebrating foreshortened lives without confronting the painful reality of their deaths keeps suicide cloaked in a mystery it can no longer claim. Suicides are neither rare nor inexplicable. There were 469 suicides in Massachusetts in 2005, more than twice the number of homicides. More than 5,000 teenagers kill themselves each year in the United States. Most had displayed symptoms of depression or other mental health problems. Almost a quarter of suicides in Massachusetts in 2005, the last for which statistics are available from the state Department of Public Health, had a history of drug or alcohol abuse.
How many victims suffered from depression that had gone undiagnosed or untreated? How many were self-medicating in a misguided attempt to stave off depression that is compounded rather than alleviated by alcohol and drugs? How are our medical and educational efforts failing our children? Those are public policy questions we do not ask often enough or loud enough when suicide remains shrouded in silence.
In private, teenagers concede how well acquainted they are with despair. Public high school students in Massachusetts answered an anonymous risk assessment survey for DPH two years ago. Twenty-seven percent reported feeling sad or hopeless for two or more weeks in the prior 12 months; 13 percent said they had seriously considered suicide. Twelve percent had actually made a suicide plan, and 6 percent had made an attempt on their lives.
We ignore those warning signs at our own risk, and theirs.
The parents, teachers, guidance counselors, and teenagers who filled the sanctuary on Wednesday morning came to comfort a grieving family and themselves. They heard a father falter, remembering a lost son who was "an amazing spirit who touched each person he encountered." They heard a sister stifle sobs, recalling a big brother who helped her with her homework and sided with her dad when she misbehaved. They heard a best friend swallow his tears, wishing only that his friend had been half as kind to himself as he was to everyone who crossed his path.
Messages delivered in whispers but worthy of a megaphone.
Eileen McNamara, a former columnist at the Globe, is a journalism professor at Brandeis University.
