What makes a teen commit suicide?
My mom has always told me that she prays for God to take her from this earth five minutes before He takes any of her children. As a mom, I know what she means. Sadly, Monday night marked the fourth time in six months in Palo Alto that a mother has outlived her child due to suicide. Her son, sixteen year-old Gunn HS junior William Dickens, sat in front of a train. Reading the story, my heart leapt into my throat. I felt like I was going to vomit; my head was spinning. I sunk to the floor. My heart breaks as a mother, for these families, for their friends, and for these kids who felt that ending their lives was better than living it.
To say these suicides are deeply troubling is an understatement. Every parent with whom I talk in Palo Alto asks the same questions: What makes a child sit in front of a train? Were these kids being treated for depression? Were they being bullied? Had their families talked to them about suicide? Who could’ve helped and didn’t – or did these deaths really come out of nowhere? Is the academic pressure that high? Is taking an overload of AP courses and having a shot at gaining admission to Stanford/Harvard/Princeton that important? Is the fear of failure so intense that our kids would rather die than fail?
I really love living in Palo Alto, but, bluntly, I’m starting to wonder what the hell is going wrong here. Four teen suicides in six months (or six years, for that matter!) is not okay. I want to know how to help these teens; I’m willing. I want to know how to protect my kids from whatever is causing this. What can we do as a community here? It’s not enough to provide grief counseling after-the-fact, and four kids from one school isn’t just “copycat.” Something is fouling the waters, and it needs to be treated on all fronts: at home, at school, and in our community. I raise my hand to help – and I think every mom I know will, too. None of us want to outlive our children, not for suicide or for any other reason.
This is an original post to the Silicon Valley Moms Blog by Roxane Dover, whose heart goes out to the families and friends of William Dickens, Sonya Raymakers, JP Blanchard, and the 13 year-old emerging freshman girl (unnamed in the media) who took her life in the days before school started this year. May they all rest in peace.
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