Imagine a country where, each year, 1 million of its high school students attempt suicide.
Imagine a country where, if you are female and from a particular race, it’s likely that 1 in 9 of your friends have attempted suicide at least once in the past year.
Imagine a country, where if you are a young male of mixed race at high school, your chances of attempting suicide are 1 in 8.
Imagine a country where in the average high school classroom of 30 students, 8 will have experienced high levels of mental distress, 4 will have thought seriously of suicide, 3 will have drawn up a plan and 2 will have attempted suicide at least once in the past 12 months.
Imagine America.
According to US Census data, in October 2009 there were 16,445,000 students enrolled in high schools across the country.
According to the Center for Disease Control’s 2009 Youth Risk Behavior Survey the average number of high school students who attempt suicide in a given year is 6.3 per cent.
Do the math. It translates into 1,036,035 American high school students attempting suicide each year.
This is a hope deficit of profoundly disturbing proportions. If ever there was a deficit that needed reducing this it. We need to embark upon a national effort that builds hope and inspiration in lives of millions of our teens and young adults. And we need to do it now.
Thankfully, a number of national leaders in the field of suicide prevention have banded together to form the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention – a public-private joint initiative. Co-chaired by the Secretary of the Army John McHugh, and the President and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters Senator Gordon Smith, the Action Alliance’s goal is to advance the national strategy for suicide prevention http://actionallianceforsuicideprevention.org.
While the focus of the Action Alliance is across the age spectrum, it’s essential that we focus a large part of our efforts on the youth population because 75% of mental illness has its first onset before the age of 25 years. Tragically, a majority of young women, and an overwhelming majority of young men, with a mental disorder do not access professional support. Not only does this negatively impact on their academic achievement and college graduation rates but it leads to an escalation of problems that often plays out many years down the track. If you can make an intervention that moves the needle on youth suicide it should translate into reduced rates of suicide and suffering down the line.
In today’s world, through technology, we have an unprecedented opportunity to reach out and connect with the millions of young people going through tough times. Through the Internet, and services like www.ReachOut.com or www.trevorproject.org young people now have places where they can go to get information, advice on support on issues that they think they alone are experiencing. Be it reading stories or watching videos of young people who talk about how they made it through a tough time, young people today now have a source of inspiration that is only a click away. They can discover that there are young people, just like them, who have experienced problems just like theirs, but found a way to make it through.
Consider Brandon, a 17 year old young man from Illinois. A few months ago, feeling like there was no way out of his predicament, Brandon when to Google and typed in “ways to commit suicide”. There among the search results he stumbled across www.ReachOut.com. In Brandon’s words “After reading many hours of watching videos, reading testimonials, and doing some simple reflection I came to the glorious conclusion to push on, and make it through. In the following months, I told my parents, started going to counseling, consulted my doctor, and started to change my personality and outlook on life.” Today Brandon is a volunteer on ReachOut.com’s national youth council.
Or consider, “Shanna” a 17 year old young woman from Michigan who sent in this message to ReachOut.com “I’ve been having a really hard time lately and this website has saved my life. I’ve been thinking about suicide a lot and the stories of here have helped me move past the thoughts and work to get better again. Thank you to everyone who has been brave enough to share their story. It really does help, you never know whose life you may be saving.”
In today’s digital world, with services like Google and Facebook, we are presented with an incredible opportunity to reach out to young people whom no service could ever reach before. We can do it at a fraction of the cost of traditional services and we can do it in a way that provides hope and inspiration for those young people wondering whether life is worth living – young people who don’t want to die but sadly can’t see any alternative than attempting to end their life.
If we are prepared to bail out our banks with billions and billions of dollars in a time of economic deficit surely we can do the same for our young people to reduce their hope deficit. It won’t cost anywhere the extraordinary sums that have been spent to date on shoring up the financial system.
With 1 million American high school students attempting suicide each year, Shanna’s comment that “you never know whose life you may be saving” has an urgency and relevancy that speaks to the entire nation. It calls on every one of us who cares about young people to set about turning a deficit of hope into a surplus of hope.
Jack Heath is the Founder, President and CEO of the Inspire USA Foundation which runs the ReachOut.com service. He is also a member of the Executive Committee of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention. A former Senior Adviser to Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, Jack and his family moved to San Francisco in 2010 so he could lead the Inspire USA Foundation www.inspireusafoundation.org.
