Back from the edge of darkness

Renee Sides stopped thinking about taking her own life when she found a reason to live.

The 23-year-old had an accidental overdose aged 16 and survived a suicide attempt a year later.

After being referred to Christchurch's 198 Youth Health Centre, she found her "path in life" as a youth worker.

"Before it was like, I'm not really doing anything for the world. Yeah, there's people that will miss me, but I'm not a loss to society'," she says. "Now I'm making a difference. It makes you feel like you have a reason to live."

Sides says school bullying meant she started feeling sad around age 12.

"Everything seemed wrong, I was pretty much never happy and had a real problem with sleeping.

"I wasn't thinking about the impact dying would have on my family and friends. I just found how horrible I was feeling was so overwhelming I had to get out. It was the only option I could see at the time. When I told people about it I realised how it affected others.

"Suicidal thoughts and feelings still come and go, but for me it's just not an option. I know I have been in that dark place and I can get through it."

She says the key to helping other youth at risk is really listening to what is going on with them.

Sides tries to help them find their own reason for living, such as sport or involvement in the community.

"When you are in that dark place, if you don't have a reason, then why not kill yourself?" she says.

Sides worries about what will happen to the city's young people following the closure of 198 Youth Health, on Hereford St, in April.

"For young people, getting help is knowing what's out there, and everyone knew about 198." (Youth mental health services are still available in Christchurch at Waipuna Trust)

After 30 years as a coroner, very little surprises Judge Neil MacLean.

But he still struggles with youth suicide. At 15.9 per 100,000 people, New Zealand has the highest rate of suicide in the OECD for youth aged 15 to 19, about double those of the United States and Australia. An Auckland University study found 10 per cent of female secondary school students had self harmed and 5 per cent of males.

MacLean says coroners are continually "baffled" at how apparently trivial things like a nasty text from a girlfriend can lead a young person to commit that "final act".

He has been coroner in a number of cases where a teenager had "withdrawn into himself" and spent a lot of time on his cellphone and computer. After they killed themselves, parents would find hundreds of abusive or bullying Facebook messages or texts and blame themselves for not realising what was happening.

MacLean believes reading about cases like that could prompt other parents to "find out a bit more about what their child's up to" and not just think it was normal teenage behaviour.

"Parents say 'we had no idea, and now blame ourselves for not seeing warning signals, but thought it was normal teenage behaviour'," he says.

Otago University professor David Fergusson says discussing the fact of suicide in the media is OK, but both news outlets and schools have to take care not to romanticise young people's deaths.

He cited the recent case of King's College student Michael Treffers, who died after fellow student James Webster drank himself to death, creating a media storm of interest. The many glowing memorials for Webster potentially encouraged others to want to emulate his death, says Fergusson.

Secondary Schools Principals Association president Patrick Walsh says schools need better resourcing and national guidelines on how to deal with youth suicide and depression.

When a student took his or her own life, schools had to find the balance between celebrating the young person's life and not glorifying what had happened.

Principals are concerned about social networking sites romanticising teenagers who kill themselves, he says. Students do burn-outs and drink in memory of their friends, which can be a lethal combination.

Walsh says telling the difference between students who are sad and going through the normal ups and downs of teenage life and those who are clinically depressed is not always easy.

Knowing who to refer students to and the ability of those agencies to deal with them is also a problem.

"People providing services from the outside appear to us to be overwhelmed by dealing with other youth problems," he says.

"They just can't cope with the number of referrals that they get, so schools are left to deal with it on their own. It's a very big issue, but one schools, on their own, can't resolve. It's a community issue, a family issue.

"We are primarily set up to educate, but increasingly high schools are seen as the panacea to solve all of society's woes and social ills. Anger management, suicide, healthy eating - there's a whole range of things people expect us to do."

Canterbury Suicide Prevention co- ordinator David Cairns says research shows it can be dangerous to talk in front of a roomful of school students about suicide, but one-to-one talks are a good thing.

The problem for school counsellors and other staff is if they ask the question and get a worrying answer, where to next?

His job is to co-ordinate all the disconnected services available to young people so those asking the questions feel confident they can deal with the answers.

Teaching children skills like problem solving and putting things in perspective are key, he says.

Schools and communities should also have plans to prevent "clusters" of suicides among young people by identifying who else might be at risk when a student took their life.

"If a friend of your child commits suicide, you should be talking to them and asking how they are coping," he says. "If they are struggling with it, you need to help them."

Maria Bradshaw's 17-year-old son, Toran Henry, took his own life in 2008. He had been referred to youth mental health services following a self-harm attempt.

She says the New Zealand suicide prevention strategy focuses on channelling young people into mental health services, but this can actually raise their risk.

She believes her son became psychotic after being prescribed anti-depressants despite no diagnosis of a psychiatric disorder.

"Drugs are too often the quick answer in New Zealand," Bradshaw says.

She recently started running a series of community seminars on suicide prevention.

"It's about educating parents around the need to listen to young people, that's another thing we don't do here.

"Most families that I have spoken to are very focused on keeping their young people safe on the roads, and are totally shocked to hear there are at least 10 suicides a week in New Zealand. They should be seeing it as a key risk to their children," she says.

Young people also needed to be educated about warning signs so they could recognise them in friends.

Bradshaw says seeing the devastation wreaked on her family has prevented Toran's friends from taking their own lives, despite thinking about it.

She had lost her job and recently had a forced sale on her North Shore home.

"I cry all the time and they say to me, 'I couldn't do that to my mum'," she says.

"Toran would have had no inkling of what this would have done to me."

- © Fairfax NZ News