Suicide

Depression is common among youth and suicide is the number two killer of youth. These are major topics and it is important that all who are ultimately responsible for of group a youth have training and knowledge. My hints are mainly reinforcing some of the basics and are not comprehensive.

• Teach the basic signs of depression and suicide to the youth. Recognize that if they are also getting this in school, you don't have to spend too much time on it. Do add a religious perspective.
  
• No matter what our training and experience, if professional counseling is not our full time job, then our job is to recognize when a youth is in trouble and to get them to professional help. It is not our job to “save” a youth by ourselves. We can, however, be a part of a team.
  
• Always take suicidal comments seriously. Never assume they are not serious or doing it just for the attention. You cannot afford to be wrong.
  
• Make responses to any suicidal seeming comments by a youth quietly and as privately as possible. They don't need public attention nor humiliation.
  
• Learn the signs of depression and suicide, but recognize that some people never show any signs. You cannot be responsible for “missing the signs.”
  
• Teens are impulsive and sometimes do things on the spur of the moment.
  
• Keep in mind that when a seriously depressed youth is suddenly “at peace,” even happy, they have quite likely settled on suicide as the solution to their problems. That person may be in imminent danger, do not leave alone; ask what their plans are; get help. This probability is even more so if the person is going to all their friends and loved ones, essentially if not explicitly saying good-bye to them. People in this stage also tend to give away valuables.
  
• Suicidal people really want to live, they just don't know how to live with the pain they are in.
  
• Proverb though it may be, it is a worthy message to repeat often in the presence of youth: “Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.”
  
• Do not suggest that there is an easy solution to their problems or that their problems are “normal” or “trivial.”
  
• If you feel that you need to act: Speak directly and clearly; ask if the have a plan; be willing to listen to the feelings, rather than being sympathetic to their woes; be caring and sorry that they have woes; be non-judgmental (This is not the time to debate whether suicide is moral or not); don't give advice or solutions to their problems; don't ask “why”; don't be sworn to secrecy -- “I'd rather have you alive even if you hate me”; insist on taking them to a counselor, rather than just giving them a phone number to call.
  
• Suicidal people normally will take direction and guidance – they really want another way out.