Last week another child gone due to suicide. When will we stop being so busy with our lives, so busy working to obtain things, so busy driving our children away before another one will die. Parents that have lost a child to suicide will tell you that none of those things mean anything now that their child is gone, and while I haven’t lost a child to suicide I have lost a husband to suicide. Watching my son grow up without his father and knowing that the day would come when I would have to tell him what happened has been a journey I wouldn’t wish on anyone. In no way can I fathom what a parent feels when they get that dreaded news, but I hope that many of us will say enough is enough and start doing something to help our children.   How can we hear that a 9 year old child hung himself in his school bathroom and not just be sick to our stomachs? How can we as a human race have such giving, caring hearts to help victims in another world, but miss what is going on in our own backyard? How can we be so self centered that when we see a child acting up that our thoughts turn to what a misbehaving child he is instead of what must be going on inside of him to act that way? I have seen some people show more empathy for an animal than a child.   “9 year old hangs himself in school bathroom”“19 year old hangs herself at her once elementary school”“16 year old commits suicide on train tracks and 4 other teenagers follow within a 6 month period Every 100 minutes another teenager will commit suicide. (livestrong.com)   In an article posted on livestrong.com, it is stated that twenty-seven percent of high school students said they had “thought seriously” about killing themselves during the past year. Eight percent said they had actually tried to kill themselves. Although one of every eight teenagers suffers with depression, the diagnosis is often missed, as depressive symptoms are often mistaken for the typical “ups and downs” of teenage life. Even in societies where suicide is illegal or taboo, people still kill themselves.   I don’t claim to have all the answers, nor do I claim to be an expert on teen depression and suicide. What I am is a normal human being who cares for others, who has learned to accept each person as they are – not how I want them to be, and someone that cares deeply about all children because they look to us to guide them and show them the way.   Have we gotten so busy and tied up in our self that we can’t lend an encouraging word to a child, show them support and be there when they need someone to talk to? I hope not!

Tags: anxiety, bipolar, depression, healing, mental health, recovery, suicide, teen suicide, wellness

This entry was posted on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 7:17 pm and is filed under Sheri's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.