How to Talk to Teenagers About Suicide

In the aftermath of two high-profile suicides and a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that showed suicide rates have risen 25 percent since 1999, the question is more urgent than ever: How do you talk about suicide with someone who is severely depressed?
The problem is particularly pronounced among young people, with suicide the second leading cause of death in 2015 for those between the ages of 10 and 24. A recent study published by the Journal of Pediatrics found that one in five California teens actively think about killing themselves, leading public health professionals to advocate treating suicide as a systemic problem rather than a personal one.  
“Instead of changing individuals, we have the ability to take a public health approach and treat settings by bringing fixes and resources to groups,” says study co-author Ron Avi Astor, a professor at University of Southern California’s School of Social Work. He found that the percentage of students who thought about suicide ranged from the low single digits to upward of 70 percent, and depended largely on the school setting.  
Until there’s a greater societal shift, however, what’s the best way to reach someone who’s thinking of suicide? We asked Astor for advice on identifying, and confronting, young people who may be harboring suicidal thoughts.

DON’T BE AFRAID TO SAY THE ‘S’ WORD

A big myth is that by talking about suicide with someone, you are planting the seed or promoting the action. That’s false.
“It’s important to know you can’t trigger suicidal thinking just by asking about it,” Allen Doederlein of the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, recently told The New York Times.
Astor agrees — especially when it comes to teenagers, who are remarkably open, he says. He notes that teens who have thought about suicide will likely be honest about it. Specifically, he says, “you want to know if they’ve thought about how to do it — if they haven’t given much thought about it versus thinking about … a time and a place.”
The more detailed they are, the more urgent it is to get them help.
“It’s very difficult to ask, but if the person has made attempts — even if they’re not strong attempts — all those factors bump it up.”

DON’T GUILT THEM INTO LIVING

When trying to convince someone not to take their life, a common go-to is to mention all the people they’d be leaving behind. “Just think of your family,” you might be tempted to say. But try to resist that urge.
“It’s important not to make someone’s suicidality about yourself or others. They’re the person who’s hurting, so the focus needs to be on their feelings, their thoughts, and finding them help,” wrote suicide survivor Sian Ferguson.
Guilting people by mentioning who would miss them only exacerbates the problem. Instead, experts recommend simply telling them how much you care about them and showing empathy by acknowledging the truth of their situation. Express to them that, yes, right now sucks, and what they’re feeling is real.

REACH OUT TO THEIR FRIENDS, TOO

In his research, Astor found that someone’s friends often have a better idea of what is going on with them than their parents or teachers do.
To that end, Astor suggests speaking with the friends of someone you think might be at risk. Oftentimes, he says, they are also harboring suicidal ideation in a type of groupthink and can help shed light on underlying issues.

HELP THEM GET HELP

If you know a teenager is, in fact, having suicidal thoughts, seek help immediately.
The Society for Prevention of Teen Suicide recommends first seeing a pediatrician, who can refer you to a mental health professional, and the American Academy of Pediatrics notes that “pediatricians are, and will continue to be, an important first source for parents who are worried about their child’s behavioral problems.”
When trying to get someone to agree to see a therapist or psychiatrist, don’t try and force them, say experts. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be blunt and level with them.
Try to make the optimistic assumption that if you could speak directly, though tactfully, and with care, then that might bring relief,” said Stephen Seligman, a clinical psychiatry professor at the University of California.

SHOW UP AND BE PRESENT

The best advice many experts give, though, is just to show up, ask questions and listen carefully to their response.
There is a lot to say about opening up the conversation and letting someone else — even angsty teens — know that things can get better with the right help.

For more information on how to help your teen or to speak to a specialist, visit the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline or call 1-800-273-8255. For more tips on speaking to your teen about suicide, visit the Society for the Prevention of Teen Suicide.

Solar Trumps Coal When It Comes to Jobs, Cash Handouts Deter Crime in California and More

 
Solar Now Provides Twice As Many Jobs As the Coal Industry, Co.Exist
While the coal industry faces a sharp decline, solar power is growing at record levels — adding jobs at a rate 17 times faster than the overall workforce. The industry is also a more lucrative option for people without higher education. As one advocate puts it, “This is just an incredible example of the opportunities that exist for people that need these opportunities the most.”
Building Trust Cuts Violence. Cash Also Helps. The New York Times
A radical approach to gun violence has helped reduce the homicide rate by nearly 60 percent in Richmond, Calif., formerly one of the nation’s most dangerous cities. Spearheaded by DeVone Boggan, a NationSwell Council member, the program identifies those most likely to be involved in violent crimes and pays them a stipend to turn their lives around. Aside from the cash benefits, participants receive mentoring from “neighborhood change agents” who have come out of lives of crime themselves.
Iceland Knows How to Stop Teen Substance Abuse but the Rest of the World Isn’t Listening, Mosaic Science
In the last two decades, Iceland has implemented an ambitious social program that’s nearly eliminated substance abuse among teens. After research showed that young people were becoming addicted to the changes in brain chemistry brought on by drugs and alcohol, experts decided to “orchestrate a social movement around natural highs,” offering extensive after-school programs in sports, dance, music — anything that could replicate the rush of drugs. This, coupled with stricter laws and closer ties between parents and schools, led to a huge societal makeover. Proponents of the program hope to recreate it in the U.S., but funding and public opinion remain obstacles.
Continue reading “Solar Trumps Coal When It Comes to Jobs, Cash Handouts Deter Crime in California and More”

For Kids Raised in the Foster Care System, This Program Provides a Future

As teens leave the foster system, they become some of the country’s most vulnerable population. They’re less likely to graduate high school, seek higher education or find long-term employment. Additionally, at least one out of four foster youths will end up homeless, forgo health care and require public assistance, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Which is why Springfield, Mo., is launching a pilot project teaching customer service skills to young adults, ages 17 to 21, leaving the foster care system and looking to enter the workforce.

The Missouri Customer Service Partnership (MCSP), which is run out of the Ozarks Technical Community College (OTC), assists at-risk youths as they transition out on their own. OTC teamed up with the Community Partnership of the Ozarks to create a 10-week, intensive course, offered both in the fall and spring, with a year of a follow-up mentorship program. It’s one of two in Missouri; the other is run out of St. Louis Community College.

“This is a great transition. It’s a bridge to help them into the workforce and into higher education,” says Marilyn Madden, who coordinates the project. “We’re attempting to empower them to be active citizens regardless of their back-story.”

Throughout the 10-week course, a group of up to 15 youths receive help with resumes and interview skills, as well as job expectations and how to prepare for a career in retail and customer service, reports the Springfield News-Leader. The pilot also assists in job placement and gives students access to support from community and business leaders. After completion of the course, students earn four college credits.

For some teens, the course provides access to more basic needs, such as how to dress or find professional clothes for work or finding a safe place to live and way to commute to work.

“It’s all about connectedness so they’re not all alone,” says Amanda Coleman, community mentorship coordinator for the Community Partnership of the Ozarks. “They need someone to talk to and someone to point them in the right direction.”

The project, funded by the Missouri Division of Workforce Development and the Missouri Department of Social Services, cost about $120,000 in the first year. The first 10-week course began this past fall and of the 12 people who enrolled, 10 quickly found jobs, one relocated and the other is still looking for a full-time position.

“They have challenges they don’t choose,” Madden says.

MORE: Foster Kids Need One Thing to Succeed in School. A Former Teacher’s Goal Is to Give It to Every Single One

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How to Bridge the Digital Divide

While many claim that devices are causing people to interact less, here’s a great example of technology bringing people together.
Once a week, 16-year-old Mikinly Sullivan travels to the Frasier Meadows retirement home in Boulder, Colo., to visit her friend, 89-year-old Kevin Bunnell. The two were connected through Cyber Seniors, a program that pairs high school volunteers with elderly individuals that need help navigating new-fangled technology.
The program wants to ensure that seniors are learning to use computers — not just letting the young people figure things out for them — so as a rule, the elder person’s fingers must be on the keyboard the whole time, while the teenager coaches them through maneuvers.
Bunnell is a poet, and Sullivan has been helping him organize the many poems he’s written over his lifetime. “I love listening to the stories from when he was young,” Sullivan says to PBS News Hour. In exchange, Bunnell wrote a poem in honor of the Cyber Seniors program.
Another senior benefitting from the program is Bruce Mackenzie. “I’m taking a class at the university called Hip-Hop 101,” he says, “And I didn’t know how to listen to the rap songs that are on hip-hop. And Ryan [a teen participant] showed me how to go to YouTube, which I never knew anything about. So I go to YouTube now and I can listen to all these rap songs for my class.”
While the program’s ultimate mission is to help seniors get online, Jack Williamson, who runs Cyber Seniors, says that it “helps build relationships between young people and seniors, which is rare in this culture today.”
As one student volunteer tells PBS News Hour, “I’m learning a lot from them and they’re learning from me. I have actually found through this that I think I like older people more than I like younger people.”
MORE: When The Elderly Need Help With Chores, This Concierge Service Does the Heavy Lifting

When Skiers Leave Behind Warm Clothing, These Teens Dole It Out to the Homeless

There’s more than a mountain of snow at ski resorts each season, as giant piles of winter coats, mittens, hats and scarves accumulate in the lost-and-found departments.
Back in 2011, two 11-year-old ski racers from the Bay Area, Corinne Hindes and Katherine Kirsebom, noticed these mountains of unclaimed winter wear at Lake Tahoe ski resorts and decided to use them to help less fortunate people.
They didn’t stop with just donating one batch of coats to homeless shelters and other charities, however. The girls founded the nonprofit Warm Winters, and to date, the organization has donated 5,000 pieces of warm clothing to help thousands of homeless people.
Even though Hindes and Kirsebom are still only teenagers, they plan to expand Warm Winters nationally with the help of a 2013 Jefferson Award, given by a foundation that describes itself as “the country’s longest standing and most prestigious organization dedicated to activating and celebrating public service.”
As part of the award, Hindes is studying leadership with the Jefferson Awards Globe Changers Leadership Program. She aims to expand Warm Winters to 10 ski-friendly states, while keeping the program a teen-led initiative as they work with the National Ski Area Association to get it off the ground at 50 or more ski resorts.
Hindes tells TalkingGood, “There was a time a few years back where I saw a homeless man in a T-shirt and jeans on a terribly cold day in winter and I was horrified by how cold he was, and the fact that he had no jacket to shield him from the cold broke my heart. That was a moment where I gained clarity about my purpose because I knew that I had to help him and others like him in any way that I could, and I had to do all that I could to make their situation better. When I gave my first coat to a homeless person, the smile on his face gave me the most rewarding feeling I had ever felt, and it still does today.”
MORE: How Does A Professional Skier Inspire Kids Toward Academic Achievement?

Inspired by Homeless Veterans in His Own Family, This Boy Scout Helps Give Those in His Community a Fresh Start

The challenge facing 17-year-old Boy Scout Robert Decker: Finding a service project that benefitted his Egg Harbor Township, N.J. community.
To earn the Eagle Rank that he’s been working for years to attain, Decker decided that he wanted to make a difference in the lives of veterans struggling with homelessness.
He Tells Devin Loring of the Press of Atlantic City that he was inspired in this mission because his grandfather and several great uncles served in World War II, and some of his uncles experienced homelessness after they returned from war.
Decker contacted Jaime Kazmarck, a social worker at the Department of Veterans Affairs outpatient clinic in Northfield, N.J., to inquire about how he could help homeless soldiers. Kazmarck is a coordinator with HUD-VASH (Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing), a collaboration between the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the VA to help homeless veterans transition off the streets. The program provides vouchers for rent payments to veterans and supports them with case management and counseling.
Kazmarck told Decker that many of the vets who finally get a key to their own apartment have few possessions to make it feel like home.
So Decker organized a campaign encouraging people to donate practical items to outfit these vets’ apartments, including towels, toothpaste and cleaning supplies.
Decker and other members of his Boy Scout troop stood outside the Somers Point supermarket ShopRite, distributing fliers about the project and talking to people about it. Over two nights, they collected more than $1,500 worth of supplies and donations. According to Loring, Decker collected enough to fill 20 laundry baskets and 10 boxes and was able to purchase 25 $10 Wal-Mart gift cards with money donated for the vets.
“We’re really grateful for Mr. Decker and the troop for getting this together,” Kazmarck tells Loring. “They did a great job. It gives them [veterans] a wonderful start in a new apartment or home.”
Decker has submitted documentation of all his work to the Eagle Scout board of review, who will soon tell him whether he has qualified. We think it’s a safe bet that this generous and hard-working scout will be rewarded with a new rank.
MORE: Veterans Receive Donations from An Unlikely Source: A Twelve-Year-Old Girl 

A Selfless Teen Treats Former Service Members to a Home-cooked Meal on Father’s Day

On Father’s Day this year, Kayla Waller, a high school senior in Shreveport Louisiana, decided to do more than simply celebrate her own father. In what an only be described as a heart-warming act, Waller showed the veterans staying at Woody’s Home for Veterans, a local Volunteers of America-run transitional home, that she considers them honorary fathers by cooking them a meal on the holiday.
“They are fathers because they are protecting us, like a father,” Waller told Craig Sims of KTBS. Waller had participated in community service projects at Woody’s Home before, and this year was inspired to come up with her own. Spending about $250 that she earned from her very first paycheck on food, Waller worked for 10 hours cooking 60 meals, which she served the veterans herself.
Charles Myrick, a veteran who stays at Woody’s Home, told Sasha Jones of KSLA that Waller’s efforts helped him “to see there are still people out there who appreciate veterans.”
Waller thinks it’s essential for young people to help others. “Think of a track race,” she told Sims, “You’re sticking the baton. You’re giving the baton to someone else. My generation is the next generation that’s coming up that’s going to be in charge.”
It sounds like Kayla Waller is doing a great job running her leg of the relay.
MORE: Minnesota Looks to a Historic Structure to Help End Veteran Homelessness

These Teen Newcomers Help Fellow Non-English Speakers Adapt

Immigrant children often help out their parents in ways most American kids could never imagine — serving as interpreters in interactions with English speakers and helping to make sense of bills and forms.
High school senior Yuling Chen is one such kid. Five years ago, Chen came to the United States with her family from China. Since arriving in America, she has always helped her family with the language that she was quicker to pick up. “When I go home, they all hand me a big stack of letters to read,” she told Chris Burrell of The Patriot Ledger.
But she doesn’t mind. “When I first came to the United States, my English wasn’t so good at all, and I wanted to help (the elderly) with their lives,” she said. Chen is one of a group of 235 Asian immigrant teenagers in Quincy, Massachusetts that are taking this assistance to the next level, volunteering to help elderly immigrants at Quincy Asian Resources.
Along with the other teens, Chen teach seniors how to use computers, help middle school students making the transition to America, and assist at the Lunar New Year party and August Moon Festival, among many other duties.
Peter Tam, a Quincy native, first came to the center in 2007 as an AmeriCorps volunteer; now he directs the youth programs, involving volunteers from both of Quincy’s public high schools. “We’re really looking to create the next generation of Asian-American leaders and recent immigrant leaders in the community,” Tam told Burrell.
To thank the teens for their hard work, Quincy Asian Resources awarded seven of them, including Chen, a college scholarship worth $1,000.
MORE: Neighborhood Centers Provide New Immigrants An Instant Community

Memphis Houses of Worship Create a Magical Night for People with Disabilities

Buoyant bubbles drifted through the air as guests — clad in tuxedos and formal dresses— arrived, walking down a red carpet. The scene is familiar to anyone who’s attended a prom, but on April 25, the remarkable night was hosted not for a high school but for Memphis residents with disabilities.
The Joy Prom, sponsored by a group of local churches, was cooked up by Ashley Parks and Ginna Rauls, both active members in the Memphis special needs community, according to Good Morning America. The two wanted to give people with disabilities a chance to experience a night of primping, pampering and dancing.
They decided to call the evening the Joy Prom because “we decided we like ‘joy’ because that’s what we hope to bring,” Parks told the Huffington Post.
Parks, the special needs ministry director for Christ United Methodist Church, enlisted the help of 350 volunteers to collect donations that would be used to create the quintessential prom experience. Back in March, the duo hosted a prom dress donation drive, and a church member offered to foot the bill for tuxedo rentals from Men’s Warehouse. The community pooled together and even bought an ice sculpture and confectionary bar for the evening.
Guests were greeted on the red carpet by Memphis Grizzlies basketball team announcer Rick Trotter, who recognized them as they arrived by limo. Each host was given a card with their date’s allergies and a list of everything he or she wanted to experience that night.
Female guests could have their nails painted or makeup done while men were able to have their shoes polished. The crowd glittered with tiaras while guests danced the night away. “We didn’t miss anything,” Parks said.
But perhaps what made this prom more special than any other is the age range of its guests. Teenagers as young at 16 mingled alongside a couple in their 60s, giving everyone a chance to experience a night to remember.
“At a certain point people phase out of things but we said, you know what, lets open this up for people over the age of 22 and think of those who may not have experienced an event like this before,” Parks said.
The night was so successful, planning for next year’s prom is already underway. We’re guessing that the 2015 prom will be just as memorable.

Their Daughter Died When She Didn’t Buckle Up. Now They’re Working to Save Other Children From the Same Danger

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation National Highway Traffic Safety Commission, more than 33,000 people were killed in car crashes in 2009. Of those fatalities, more than half were not wearing their seatbelt. Last year, Alexa Johnson, a 19-year-old Colorado resident, was one such victim.
Johnson died when she lost control of her pickup truck in rural Weld County, Colorado and was ejected through the driver’s side window. She wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.
Colorado highway officials note that many drivers on rural roads fail to wear safety restraints. In fact, 59 percent of the unbuckled fatalities in Colorado last year occurred on rural roadways. Alexa’s father, Tad Johnson, told Monte Whaley of the Denver Post, “The first thing I felt was anger and then I wanted to blame someone. And then I had an ‘aha’ moment and I said, ‘Alexa, what are we going to do about this?'”
Tad and his wife Jona launched a social media campaign to raise awareness about the problem of young adults in rural areas driving without seatbelts. He looked at the photos on Alexa’s Facebook page and said, “We saw that in all those photos, hardly ever was Alexa and her friends using seat belts. It’s something that we just had to deal with.”
The Johnsons took to Facebook with their message about buckling up for safety, and then began to sew inch-wide Velcro ribbons that wrap around seat belts to remind drivers to use them. The ribbons are called Alexa’s Hugs, and since last year, the Johnsons have produced thousands of them, which now come in a variety of designs.
Alexa’s Hugs have already saved at least one life. Alexa’s friend, Kole Kilcrease told Whaley he was driving near the same stretch of highway where Alexa died when he hit ice and lost control, rolling his pickup two-and-a-half times. Both Kilcrease and his passenger survived because they were buckled in. Kilcrease said, “I never really buckled up because it just seemed like an inconvenience. You have a busy day, and you have other things on your mind. I don’t think that anymore.”
MORE: A 16-Year-Old Died in A Car Accident. What Happened Next Changed Hundreds of Teenagers’ Lives.