<p>Our area has seen a number of middle school suicides in the last couple years (we are about an hour north of Southgate). I wish I knew why this is happening. Believe me, junior high school s**ked even when I was in school, back in dinosaur days. That part is nothing new (although the cyber-stuff is, and I know that is an issue). But the suicides around here have been, for the most part, due to depression. I would imagine people were depressed in my day, too. What is causing kids to commit suicide because of it now, though? My heart breaks every time I hear of another kid who chose this route.</p>
<p>Maybe isolated people feel even more isolated with the others texting. It’s lonely feeling you’re always on the outside and not seeing signs of it EVER changing. Problems can seem monumental and forever at that age, especially if you just recently got cut out or have always been.</p>
<p>Many, many of the comments today on various news sites were absolutely disgusting. I thought this was a beautiful response to everything: </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>[Quantifying</a> Tragedy: A Response to the Davidson Middle School Suicide | The Michigan Journal](<a href=“http://michiganjournal.org/2013/03/21/quantifying-tragedy-a-response-to-the-davidson-middle-school-suicide/]Quantifying”>http://michiganjournal.org/2013/03/21/quantifying-tragedy-a-response-to-the-davidson-middle-school-suicide/)</p>
<p>HI, you’re at least partially right. Kels, I think you might remember the very young Westland boy who took his own life a few years back (initials BS). He was a part of my sports organization and we called together a meeting to see if we could address the growing problem. We invited parents, siblings, kids, everyone to have a discussion. I’m JUST on the beginning end of the social media generation. I got a Myspace either VERY late in my 8th grade year or at the beginning of the summer. It’s hard. It’s REALLY hard to be a loner or have depression and see what’s you’re missing out on. We came to the conclusion that bullying and loneliness isn’t necessarily any better than 20, 30, 40 years ago- it’s just now you’re CONSTANTLY reminded of just how alone you are. At least I didn’t have my loneliness shoved constantly in my face and I was able to find a good group of friends right away in HS. I can’t imagine how much worse it would have been if I had to deal with cyberbullying and constant reminders when I was in middle school.</p>
<p>I have been following this story too. It breaks my heart to think of this boy’s pain and the pain of his parents. And it infuriates me, too, that some in the local media are turning this into fodder for the same old debates on child-rearing practices, or gun control, or school safety. It should not even be a debate on bullying, because apparently this boy wasn’t bullied.</p>
<p>If anything, why don’t we talk about mental health services for depressed kids?</p>
<p>Yeah, a person’s social worth these days is measured by # of facebook friends and how often they’re texting. It’s crazy how people will start texting even waiting 30 seconds for the elevator. If you’re a loner, there’s constant reminders, and this goes for adults who struggle as well. I find it hard to believe he wasn’t bullied though. Do you expect the school to admit to this and put themselves at risk of liability? Anyway, it’s tragic no matter the circumstances.</p>
<p>steel, I know kids who knew this kid. I did not know him directly though. According to his friends, if there was bullying, they knew nothing about it. He had a pretty good circle of friends and they never saw or heard anything. I do believe the kids at least would admit it.</p>
<p>I’m just going to throw out there that there are a myriad of reasons OTHER than bullying or social isolation that cause people to comtemplate or commit suicide–e.g., family issues, academic issues, break ups, mental illness, etc, and they can occur in isolation and in a myriad of combinations. There’s not just one reason (or one “understandable” reason) that underlies suicide.</p>
<p>Regardless, this is tragic and my thoughts and prayers are with the student’s loved ones.</p>
<p>Very sad. How do these kids get their hands on guns!!!??? Ugh! </p>
<p>A Florida teen just killed his younger brother with a gun because he thought he was an intruder. Again, why do parents let their minor children have easy unsupervised access to guns???</p>
<p>Also, teen suicide is not a “new” issue, though highly publicized ones may be more common due to the Internet. Actually, there’s an interesting body of research that indicates that highly publicized suicides can and sometimes do trigger other suicides, sadly.</p>
<p>That’s quite sad, psych. So sad. It does look like clinical depression was involved. It was not unknown that he was battling it. </p>
<p>It seems like a lot of teen depression issues are just swept under the rug. “Oh they’re just hormonal/moody/teenagers! They’ll snap out of it eventually.” I wish depression was better understood by the public =/</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is bs, though, because this is the only time that people actually pay attention to issues. That’s like saying that we shouldn’t be discussing race issues after news gets round about a hate crime, or that we shouldn’t discuss fortifications for hurricanes or earthquakes after a natural disaster. It’s ridiculous. The real shame is on people who let things like this happen over and over again without taking the time to think about what can be done to prevent stuff like this from happening again. </p>
<p>But, more seriously, how low can you go? We’re all trying to deal with tragedies like these in our own ways and you have the gall to shame people who cope in a way that just isn’t passive enough for you? How dare you cast any person’s way of coping with a tragedy like this as shameful because it actually involves actively dealing with what that person sees as its root causes, as if you’re morally superior because you think it’s more appropriate to say “oh, that’s so terrible” or “my condolences”.</p>
<p>Yes our world would a nicer and better place if depression were more widely understood and treatment was more rapid effective and accessible to all with NO shame and stigma, with nominal cost. Teens especially have trouble getting access to treatment, especially if family is in denial or doesn’t notice or take it seriously promptly enough.</p>
<p>Generally many folks and cultures are reluctant to embrace mental health services. This makes treatment much more complicated for all concerned.</p>
<p>One of the great things about many city high schools, is that they have staffed health clinics on site. My younger daughters school had both a psychiatric nurse practitioner and a nurse practitioner who specialized in physical health.
( it was run by a local hospital)
When she was in middle school, her school had a drug & alcohol counselor who was paid by a grant ( she was in the k-12 building about 3/4 time), so this was separate from the counselor appointed by district who was mostly a class advisor. The drug & alcohol counselor had a good rapport with the kids and she contacted me when my Ds friends contacted her with their concerns. She also helped them stage an intervention when they were worried about another friends alcohol use.</p>
<p>Support staff for kids is critical, but they are always the first to get cut, because technology upgrades come first.</p>
<p>Can we start a national campaign to demand equal medical coverage for mental health issues and make a promise to the younger generation that we will educate them at a young age about depression and other serious mental health issues ?</p>
<p>A dozen years ago an out-of-town friend’s child, a 9th grader at the time, was being bullied and spiralled into the depths of major depression. The girl was very open with her parents about the bullying and the three of them worked together over a period of several months to try to rectify the situation. The teen seemed to be coping pretty well. School administrators intervened with the students who were harassing her and the worst of the problem seemed to end by Christmastime. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, when school resumed in January the girl started exhibiting personality changes. My friend said it was almost like PTSD. Her D wasn’t sleeping, she stopped communicating with her parents, her grades, which had always been straight As before, started slipping, and she snapped at her parents if they asked her the simplest questions, such as “How was school today?” My friend quickly recognized the problem. By mid-February she had found a therapist and set up a 1st appointment for her D. The 1st appointment was for late March. </p>
<p>One Saturday less than a week after setting up the appointment with the therapist, she got a call from one of her D’s friends. The girl, whose father had suffered from major depression, called to let my friend know that her D had confessed to her that she’d nearly committed suicide at school earlier that week. The girl went to school in a very old 5 story building. The 5th floor was used only for storage and students were allowed to hang out there during lunch. There were no bars on the windows. My friend’s D said that a voice told her to just let herself fall out of the window and all her troubles would be over. She stood at the window and looked down at the snowy lawn and thought about how peaceful it looked. The only reason that she didn’t do it was because some other students walked into the room and she decided she didn’t want to traumatize them by allowing them to see her fall to her death. Needless to say, after my friend received this shocking phone call, her child’s appointment with the therapist was moved up to the following Monday!</p>
<p>My friend’s D eventually recovered and she’s now a successful college graduate who’s out in the workforce. But, here’s the thing I find so shocking. After my friend’s D entered therapy, my friend started hearing from people who’d seen disturbing behavior changes in her child and hadn’t said anything. My friend started doing some snooping into her D’s room and her school backpack trying to make sure she wasn’t missing any new danger signs. I encouraged her to do that. She found a health class journal full of very disturbing entries by her D indicating how low her self-esteem had fallen. There were entries prior to the time she entered therapy that sounded suicidal to my friend. The health teacher wrote back to my friend’s D after every entry trying to help her problem-solve and trying to get her to see that she did have value. Great. But, never once did the teacher contact my friend to tell her that she thought her child might have a serious health problem!!! Mothers of my friend’s daughter’s pals later told her that they were worried. They had noticed personality changes. But, no one said anything to her until after she let it be known that her child was seeing a therapist. Not one teacher ever let my friend know they had any concerns. My friend never spoke to any of her D’s teachers about her health. She felt that many of them were part of the reason that her D was bullied mercilessly for so long. The teachers had to have known at least some of what was being done to her D and they ignored it.</p>
<p>I think I understand in part why people were reluctant to say anything to my friend about her child’s mental health. I’m sure they were afraid of giving offense (what a shame anyone should feel offended by hearing that a relative might have a mental illness), possibly being wrong (related to the previous issue), thinking perhaps that someone who knew the situation better than themselves would speak to the parents, assumed that the parents were intelligent and would figure it out for themselves, etc. Sadly, almost all of those reasons relate to the fact that there’s still such a stigma in this country about having a mental illness. I feel sure that if any of the adults who had contact with my friend’s D had seen her exhibiting, say, signs of pain when she walked and knew she was trying to hide it from her parents, they would have spoken up.</p>
<p>Thats why we need staff in the schools, and educate kids about the signs of illness, so they can seek help for themselves or their friends.
Kids haven’t internalized all the society taboos yet.</p>
<p>As the mother of a middle school child, my heart breaks for this family. Middle school is a tough time - even for our seemingly well-adjusted kids. Throw in bullying or family problems and the poor children are confused and may get depressed. Often kids of this age are afraid to ask for help. Or they may not know who to turn to - or what to say. They are afraid to appear weak and keep their problems to themselves thinking that they can handle it.<br>
It was said that bullying was not involved in this instance, but since teachers, parents and other kids often miss bullying behavior, that may not be the case. I have been through many years of middle school with my kids and know that teachers and school officials miss a great deal of the bullying behavior that transpires.
Often kids look the other way when bullying occurs because they are afraid of being bullied themselves - or of being labled “uncool”.<br>
As for the gun issue - yes, situations like this give us an opportunity to have rational discussions about these topics. Not heated rhetoric that strays from the problem, but constructive solutions.<br>
Guns need to be properly handled and stored so that children do not have access to them.
I don’t think that there is any argument of merit against that statement.
My prayers go out to this family…</p>