Car­o­line C Rav­el­lo

Ac­cord­ing to the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion sta­tis­tics, every year, al­most one mil­lion peo­ple die from sui­cide, a glob­al mor­tal­i­ty rate of 16 per 100,000, or one death every 40 sec­onds.

In the last 45 years, sui­cide rates have in­creased by 60 per cent world­wide. Sui­cide is among the three lead­ing caus­es of death among those aged 15-44 in some coun­tries, and the sec­ond lead­ing cause of death in the ten-24 years age group. These fig­ures do not in­clude sui­cide at­tempts, which are up to 20 times more fre­quent than com­plet­ed sui­cide. (www.who.int/men­tal_health)

The site al­so says, "Al­though tra­di­tion­al­ly sui­cide rates have been high­est among the male el­der­ly, rates among young peo­ple have been in­creas­ing to such an ex­tent that they are now the group at high­est risk in a third of coun­tries, in both de­vel­oped and de­vel­op­ing coun­tries."This dis­course on sui­cide was prompt­ed by the news of St Valen­tine's Day when two teenagers in East Trinidad drank poi­son re­sult­ing in the death of the young woman and hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion of the young man.

But deep in my mind is the pain for the fam­i­ly of a young woman in my com­mu­ni­ty, who, "frus­trat­ed with her prepa­ra­tion for up­com­ing ex­am­i­na­tions, com­mit­ted sui­cide by hang­ing her­self from a shed be­hind her home" last May.Khadi­ja Dabideen, 19, of Sixth Com­pa­ny, New Grant, was a stu­dent from the Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts (Costaatt), who was found dead by her fa­ther.The depth of that hurt nev­er sub­sided. As a for­mer Costaatt lec­tur­er, I keep think­ing of the times I spent with trou­bled young peo­ple, then dri­ving alone to Moru­ga at 11 pm with con­stant prayers on my lip for my own safe­ty, on a lone­ly road where T&TEC has sup­plied elec­tric­i­ty on­ly in places where there are hous­es.

That com­mit­ment to lis­ten­ing was the un­paid part of my job and the el­e­ment, which I am cer­tain ac­counts for the close re­la­tion­ship I hold with many of my for­mer charges.

I did it be­cause I re­mem­ber the trou­bles of my youth, which went in­to my ear­ly thir­ties un­til the in­ter­ven­tion of some­one who pledged to lis­ten–and did, giv­ing some of the most bru­tal, but nec­es­sary di­rec­tion to shock me out of my "maze of stu­pid­i­ty."Dabideen left a note in her di­ary ex­plain­ing that she could not cope with the stress of ex­ams say­ing she was dis­ap­point­ed with her per­for­mance over the last se­mes­ter. In her last days she was de­scribed as be­ing "a with­drawn teenag­er who did not con­fide in any­one. She was not bathing or eat­ing. She was not clean­ing her room." She al­so left sev­er­al notes in her room to her fam­i­ly ex­plain­ing why she did not want to live.

Sui­cide is com­plex, with psy­cho­log­i­cal, so­cial, bi­o­log­i­cal, cul­tur­al, and en­vi­ron­men­tal fac­tors in­volved. Teen sui­cide pre­ven­tion re­quires dili­gence on the part of guardians, as well as a will­ing­ness to seek pro­fes­sion­al help when it is need­ed.There are some things that teens might do that could in­di­cate that they are con­tem­plat­ing, or even plan­ning, sui­cide. Here are some com­bined notes from var­i­ous Web sites, of the in­di­ca­tions of a sui­cide plan:

�2 Ex­press­es bizarre or un­set­tling thoughts on oc­ca­sion

�2 Ex­press­es thoughts of death, dy­ing and a de­sire to leave this life, some­times ac­tu­al­ly say­ing, "I'm think­ing of com­mit­ting sui­cide" or "I want to kill my­self" or "I wish I could die"

�2 Cre­ates sui­cide or dis­turb­ing notes

�2 There are al­so ver­bal hints that could in­di­cate sui­ci­dal thoughts or plans in phras­es as: "I want you to know some­thing, in case some­thing hap­pens to me" or "I won't trou­ble you any more"

�2 Ev­i­dence of sub­stance abuse (al­co­hol and drugs, both le­gal and il­le­gal)

�2 Throws away im­por­tant pos­ses­sions, be­gins giv­ing away favourite be­long­ings, or promis­ing them to friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers

�2 Dra­mat­ic mood swings where the teenag­er shows signs of ex­treme cheer­ful­ness fol­low­ing pe­ri­ods of de­pres­sion or the con­verse

�2 Changes in nor­mal habits, such as eat­ing and sleep­ing, and spend­ing time with friends and fam­i­ly

�2 Dra­mat­ic weight fluc­tu­a­tions, in any di­rec­tion

�2 Lost in­ter­est in school­work and ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties (in­clud­ing de­clin­ing grades)

While all of these things are not nec­es­sar­i­ly in­di­ca­tions of sui­ci­dal thoughts and feel­ings when tak­en sep­a­rate­ly, or hap­pen­ing rarely, a pat­tern can ex­hib­it a se­ri­ous prob­lem, as can a com­bi­na­tion of fac­tors.Teenagers have dif­fi­cul­ty cop­ing with life's chal­lenges, lead­ing to help­less­ness and dis­cour­age­ment, which in turn can turn to self-de­struc­tive thoughts as an es­cape from the seem­ing­ly in­sur­mount­able pres­sures of life.One of the most im­por­tant as­pects of teen sui­cide pre­ven­tion is sup­port. The teenag­er needs to know that you sup­port and love him or her, and that you are will­ing to help him or her find hope in life again.(www.teen­sui­cide.us)