Tragic Young Suicides

Cakes.

The recent tragic suicides of young people have got me thinking about the whole area surrounding youth mental health and what could be done to prevent these.

I'd like to see what C&H think could be done to help prevent these and what services could be put in place to help young people with their mental health and reduce the rate of suicide among young people.

I think that young people should be made more aware of the services out there that they can go to to talk about their problems. I think that this should be done through schools, it should be a core part of schools' SPHE programs throughout primary school and secondary.

I think younger children should be made aware that it's ok to talk about their problems and know where to go to talk about them.

I've loads more but I can't think of them at the minute.

So, what do yous think C&H?

Mod Note:

I'm going to add in links to helpful sites and some helpline numbers. Remember talking always helps.

Please talk
Dublin Samaritans
Cork Samaritans
Console
1 life

1850 60 90 90 - The Samaritans
1800 24 71 00 - 1 life

Reach out

AtomicKoala

There should definitely be more talk about depression and stuff anyway. In my decade plus of schooling the only time we seriously discussed depression was when we off on a tangent in an English class. Ridiculous really, and sad too.

Colm!

I kind of feel that SPHE classes in school spend too much of their time almost avoiding the serious issues such as depression; I think that most people don't realise that it is very important to talk about their problems and that there are places that they can go to for help.
Tragic young suicides have sadly been going on for a long time; one actually hit my home town a while back, a lad who had dropped out of school and I'd say could have been saved if he had just looked for help: it shocked everyone, nobody saw it coming. The worst of it though is that because he was a bit older and outside of the school, it was never really mentioned outside a few people. He lived across the road from me and my parents, so it kinda hit close to us, even if we never knew him that well.

There's been a recent attack on sites like ask.fm for apparently "facilitating cyberbullying" in the light of recent suicides instead of... you know, attacking the people who're actually giving people abuse at a level that's causing people to take their own lives. In the light of recent suicides all over the newspapers I'm wondering why we aren't seeing a more productive approach against the kind of attitude that's allowing these things to happen rather than the tools people use: bullying has existed probably since the dawn of time itself after all.

Cakes is right. We do need to try and come up with better solutions to educate and hopefully prevent more of these tragedies.

anirishlad

Ask.fm isn't the problem, people are.

Pigwidgeon

I think the main issue that really needs to be tackled in this country is the stigma around mental health, once that starts to get dealt with and people aren't ashamed or afraid to talk to people it will obviously help to decrease the numbers of suicide. I think it needs to be brought into the education system from when kids are young, if they're brought up aware of services and the help that is out there, it would obviously be much better. There was hardly anything about suicide or depression in my entire time in school, the only time I became aware of services like pleasetalk was through college. So many people these days are affected in some way or other by suicide, more needs to be done, but other than trying to educate children when they're young I'm not sure what else can be done. The biggest problem is clearly going to be with young men, who are afraid of talking about their feelings in fear of being called gay or a sissy, and because of this and trying to live up to manly, strong images they have the highest rate of suicide.

Colm!

anirishlad wrote: »

Ask.fm isn't the problem, people are.

Exactly, but this is something that 10,000 people and counting don't understand. I made a post on how people are the problem, and got this back:

So this guy (who actually demands that his post get 50,000 likes for one thing) who rants on about how much of a pity these recent suicides are has decided that "Go fuck yourselves" is the solution.
Charming.

And that brings us right around to where we started, because some people enjoy being like that: attacking other people until they get quiet, they don't talk, and then suddenly we've got another tragedy.

Pigwidgeon covered it excellently in her post; we need to remove the barriers that are stopping people from talking and getting help. It just irritates me how the same people who pretend so much to care about it are showing the exact same problem back. There's this idea that young men in particular have these expectations to live up to, and anyone who tries to say otherwise may either be afraid to say so or be told to "go fuck themselves" if they do.


I've always admired C&H as a community for its stance on mental health. Help, on anything, is just a PM away, and our "Have you ever had depression?" thread is something that I've always admired; it's a genuinely useful source of information and support for everyone, and it really came to show when we tried to help the search for Pygmalion (R.I.P). I think that this board has probably helped some people through some hard times, and long may it continue to do so.

unknown13

I feel there is a lot issues with this area that have to be addressed.

The first one is stigma as Pigwidgeon rightfully pointed. There is a lot of stigma around bullying because people are afraid to report it because they will be seen differently by their peers as a; 'rat', 'snitch', 'teller' etc, the list is endless of names people.

The second issue I feel is that there should be an anonymous reporting system for young people. So they can report their problem and have it dealt with. The internet is a wide open place so if someone reports online bullying it might not be the actual direct person being affected.
Simple example, I post something here calling one of the C&H mods a name. Someone who is not a mod sees it and clicks report button and that report has come in from another poster who is not a mod of the site. Just a regular poster.

The final issue is that websites policies on cyber bullying need to be looked at in light of the two incidents. I think more can be done on some sites but that is up to the sites to work out and review themselves.

wnolan1992

anirishlad wrote: »

Ask.fm isn't the problem, people are.

Tell that to Ray D'Arcy, someone who prides himself on being an advocate of good mental health and who's the face behind many suicide awareness campaigns.

Just last week, he called on his 200,000+ listeners to seek out Mark Terepin (Ask.fm founder), and bombard him with demands to come on the show and answer questions as to "Why he provides a platform form cyber bullying."

Here's a link to an email I sent him outlining how he could better deal with the issue.

An extract from it:

wnolan1992 wrote: »

Can you not see that this isn't solving the problem? The problem is the bullies, not the platform the bullies use. The solution is to target the bullies with a series of anti-bullying campaigns, education and parents monitoring their kids' internet usage.

You yourself could play a part in this, as you have a radio show with some of the highest listenership figures in the country, so why not organise an bullying awareness campaign? Why not get people talking about the real issues rather than focusing on Ask.fm?

Tackling the depression/suicide issue has to start in schools. It needs to be ingrained in kids from a young age that to talk about feelings is not a sign of weakness. It's distressing to see the "Big boys don't cry!" attitude still being passed on today. I know full well that if I had had the stones to vocalise half the sh*t that was going through my head in my last two years in secondary school, I would have been lambasted and mercilessly mocked as "a pussy", and tbh I doubt much has changed.

One thing I will say is that we probably got more talks on depression than most. I think that was largely down to the fact that in my five years there the school was hit with a number of tragic deaths by both suicide and other causes, so I imagine they felt it necessary to hammer home the point to us.

But even so I think most of my classmates came out of those talks still making fun of them. In fact, I remember we got cards with loads of helpline numbers on them in fourth year (or fifth year, depending on your school), and a lot of people made a big show of throwing their's in the bin on the way out.

unknown13 wrote: »

The first one is stigma as Pigwidgeon rightfully pointed. There is a lot of stigma around bullying because people are afraid to report it because they will be seen differently by their peers as a; 'rat', 'snitch', 'teller' etc, the list is endless of names people.

The second issue I feel is that there should be an anonymous reporting system for young people. So they can report their problem and have it dealt with. The internet is a wide open place so if someone reports online bullying it might not be the actual direct person being affected.
Simple example, I post something here calling one of the C&H mods a name. Someone who is not a mod sees it and clicks report button and that report has come in from another poster who is not a mod of the site. Just a regular poster.

Couldn't agree more with this.

Too often I've seen the person who reports bullying get singled out and bullied in turn as a result.

Salty

I think there's another layer to the the perceived "image" of those who report being bullied or try to talk about their depression. Aside from being further chastised by the ignorant asshats who are everywhere, there's also the problem of how their actual friends react to them.

Many people, when their friends explain how they're feeling to them, don't know how to react or what to say, start treating them differently and don't talk or act with them as comfortably as they used to. The dynamic in the friendship changes, when all anyone wants is someone who they can talk candidly with, without it affecting the friendship negatively.

It's very hard to find someone who will listen to you when there are awful things going through your head, but who will treat you just the same the rest of the time. Cos really, you're the same person you always were, just with this extra component that needs to be dealt with.

I don't even know if any of that makes sense, it makes sense in my head...not sure if I'm really articulating it all very clearly!

HandsomeDivil

In the last day or two the "likes" on facebook have gone mad, "X person go kill yourself you fat bitch" etc., it makes me so angry, there's people in my year in school that are having these "likes" made about them and they're the most harmless people like, it's disgusting. Co you know there's gonna be some person with low confidence who takes it to heart and does something stupid. An example of one I've just come across:

lads if (person's name) didnt get the abortion shed be as fat as santa cause shes fat as it is! with her blonde head if she didnt KILL HER CHILD the child would have a big blonde ugly head like her........ how would you like it if your mam killed you you handicaaap .. jump off the bridge you aids basterded go find out who your real dad is, maby if your mam didnt have you when she was like 12 you would have him now go die you killleeeerrrrr

Colm!

HandsomeDivil wrote: »

In the last day or two the "likes" on facebook have gone mad, "X person go kill yourself you fat bitch" etc., it makes me so angry

The more that changes, the more that stays the same. This happened before, and I got equally pissed off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwBgvFVTROY

Pigwidgeon

HandsomeDivil wrote: »

In the last day or two the "likes" on facebook have gone mad, "X person go kill yourself you fat bitch" etc., it makes me so angry, there's people in my year in school that are having these "likes" made about them and they're the most harmless people like, it's disgusting. Co you know there's gonna be some person with low confidence who takes it to heart and does something stupid. An example of one I've just come across:

lads if (person's name) didnt get the abortion shed be as fat as santa cause shes fat as it is! with her blonde head if she didnt KILL HER CHILD the child would have a big blonde ugly head like her........ how would you like it if your mam killed you you handicaaap .. jump off the bridge you aids basterded go find out who your real dad is, maby if your mam didnt have you when she was like 12 you would have him now go die you killleeeerrrrr

Holy crap. I hope you reported those pages. I'm actually speechless.

HandsomeDivil

Pigwidgeon wrote: »

Holy crap. I hope you reported those pages. I'm actually speechless.

They're not actually pages though, they're just Likes you can create, I don't know if it's possible to report them...?

Insect Overlord

Anyone else watching the "Bullyproof" documentary on RTÉ 1 tonight? Seems relevant. ^

wnolan1992

Christ, just got an invite from one of my "friends" on Facebook to a "Ban Ask.FM" page he's started.

Took a look to see what people were saying on it, and when someone pointed out that banning Ask.FM was a misguided goal that wouldn't actually solve the problem, the administrator attacked them saying, and I quote: "Well, you must be in favour of young people committing suicide so!".

Not a hint of irony.

wnolan1992

Jesus...

The 15 year old sister of Erin Gallagher committed suicide last night...


Can't imagine what that family must be going through...

Jacks Smirking Revenge

My school had an assembly on bullying, it placed ALL blame on Ask.fm like it was the freakin' anti-christ.
Not to mention that the school has no idea how to deal with bullying, seriously. For an example in my art class last year I was dealing with constant teasing and slagging from a few idiots mostly aimed towards a break up I had beforehand, teacher saw this, turned a blind eye. Did not give half a fuck and that seems to be the attitude of most of the teachers in that shithole.

Long story short, people are the problem, not the internet. The internet is just an outlet.

GoldFour4

Blaming a website will never be the solution. Some people honestly think that the founder of ask.fm doesn't care about this tragic incident. I think a lot of it is parents and people our age who are don't believe that their children/ peers could be responsible for the bullying which tormented those girls to take their lives.

Some people are just emotionally unattached and don't understand the hurt they're causing other people. One persons joke is another persons dagger. As was pointed out above our SPHE system is nonsense. So much emphasis is placed on minor issues. I can't remember the last time a 13 year old committed suicide because they smoked. We need to teach young people that there are better ways to have a laugh then to make one of someone anonymously on the internet.

I've never used ask.fm btw and I'm curious, is it moderated ?

SarahBeep!

I think the problem is people not talking.

I have such a huge issue with SPHE in schools. I'm 4th year science teaching and I'm writing my Thesis about about the Importance of Relationships and Sexuality Education in 2nd year SPHE. Basically, I want to be the link between the pupils and the teachers saying 'This is what they need and this is the best way to give it to them'.
It's something a lot of people are embarrassed about, sex. So what, it's how we all got here. When I was teaching it to my 2nd year science class I gave them opportunities to ask questions anonymously on slips of paper and I answered them as honestly and frankly as I could. Because I'd like to know when I have kids if they ask an adult a question they won't shy away from giving a proper answer.

Just like mental health.

Say depression out loud. Say it again. It's easier the second time isn't it?

We're quick to give out about being tired/hungry/cold but why are we so hesitant to say to someone 'I'm feeling down today' or 'I feel myself slipping'?
I know I am. I hate showing anyone ANY chinks in my armour. I'd hate to think I'd be going about my day and someone could look and me and think 'That's that girl that's depressed, I'd better leave her too it.' or 'We'd better wrap her in cotton wool in case we upset her'.

I think people forget how loved they are. Even if you think you're not, there's at least one person.
Last year at the funeral of a young man I know who died by suicide I'll never forget the crowds. An entire rugby team of guys in their early 20's not being afraid to cry in front of anyone. My best friend who was his girlfriend running on autopilot. His mother looking like.....there's no words for how that woman feels.

There's a little boy out there with no Daddy because he felt he had nowhere to turn.

Don't be afraid to let people no you think you might need a bit of help.
Don't be afraid to offer someone help.

No man is an island. Wanting to take a break from being on the mainland happens us all. It's when you find yourself not wanting to go back you gotta send out an SOS.

Cakes.

Meant to reply to this the other day.

I'm part of this new local suicide forum thingy and we're trying to get all the groups working in this area together to co-ordinate and see what we can all do working together. I'm making sure that youth organisations are included in this because if it's made aware that it's ok to talk when people are young they'll carry it with them throughout their lives.

In school I'm also working on a Positive Mental Health week and a sort of info board for people to know where to go and who to phone and stuff if they've a problem.

The main thing I want to do is get people to know that it is ok to talk! Because, as Sarah said, the main problem is people not talking!

Raising awareness of the organisations which are there for people is one of the main things, in my opinion, letting people know who is their when they have a problem!