The death of teen suicide
When it comes to our children, suicide is everyone's problem.
It's everyone's problem because prevention could come from any one of us.
That's the thrust of an effort locally to responsibly act when we see warning signs, not just react after it's too late. Helping one of our young people decide to seek help saves that life and renders unnecessary the need to counsel many others after their friend or acquaintance has taken his or her life.
In reporting on suicides in general and teen suicides in particular, newspapers sometimes find themselves in the eye of the storm. Some experts advocate a media blackout, believing any public dissemination of suicide information only provides fuel for other teens who might be susceptible to killing themselves. At the other end of the spectrum, some newspapers have done large front-page stories with explicit details on suicides, raising awareness and perhaps community anxiety concurrently.
At The Press, we believe the public has a right to know what's happening and that such knowledge is important in recognizing a problem so it can be adequately addressed. Our stories on teen suicides are consistently short, designated for an inside page and missing unnecessary and hurtful details. Our objective is to raise awareness without glamorizing the death, and we seek to be respectful toward the suicide victim's family. Our mission is to report as responsibly as we can what's going on around us, then let readers determine the relative value of that information.
From the front row of this opinions page, however, we ardently applaud local efforts to get the entire community involved in addressing our region's unacceptably high teen suicide rate. QPR - Question, Persuade, Refer - as outlined in today's front page story, is as good a starting point as any.
Coeur d'Alene School District is taking the local lead with QPR. Starting with all 1,200 staff members and reaching out to families - those who don't want their students involved will have that option - training that can take as little as one hour will soon begin. The district plans to have online resources available, as well.
Research shows that teens' brains are not close to fully developed; teens are less equipped to deal with stress and depression than they will be when they've had a chance to mature more and gain a little more perspective.
Confronting this combustible mixture with powerful resources is both logical and compassionate. We applaud Coeur d'Alene School District for taking the lead and Kootenai Health and the region's mental health community for their parts in addressing this devastating problem. Ending teen suicide would mark a spectacular new beginning for North Idaho.