By Kaitlin Candelaria
A recent high-profile suicide at a high school in Gadsden and anonymous letters left at Hoover High School recently shined a light on an issue that has been quietly haunting Alabama communities.
Suicide is a difficult topic to deal with at best, but talking about it is crucial, according to experts and anti-suicide advocates. The rate of suicides in Alabama has been climbing for years and now outpaces the national rate, according to statistics from the Alabama Department of Public Health.
In 2013, Alabama lost 719 people to suicide, far more even than the 420 people lost to homicide, according to the department’s Alabama Suicide Fact Sheet.
Although the problem is prevalent among all populations, its effect on youth is nothing short of devastating. According to the American Association of Suicidology, suicide is the second most common cause of death for Americans ages 14-24. In 2011, 822 youth suicides were reported nationwide, with the lion’s share of those being boys and young men.
Recently, an anonymous letter was found distributed through Hoover High School. It was written by a student who appeared to be suffering from depression and who was threatening suicide. The student was later identified by school officials, who hoped to give the student and his family access to resources that could help with his condition.
Billy Bromberg, one of the founding members of Aware Mountain Brook, an anti-suicide advocacy group, said that reaching someone in time can make the difference between life and death.
“Suicide is preventable,” he said. “But the only way it’s preventable is if people ask. The American Association of Suicidology has a slogan – R U OK? – and that is really what they tell people to ask more than anything else.”
Bromberg lost a niece and a nephew to suicide. After his nephew’s death three years ago, he and other members of the Mountain Brook community came together to form Aware to bring the topic to the forefront of conversation.
“I’ve met a lot of people who have survived attempts and what they kind of say in common is that ‘It wasn’t something I could not think about.’ A compulsion,” he said. “They say they didn’t choose to think about it or look at it as an option, but simply one day, the thought was in their mind.”
It’s hard to speculate why some young people seem to be more affected by these sorts of thoughts than others.
According to the AAS, Alabama ranked 22nd in the list of states with the most suicides in the nation in 2013, with a rate of 14.9 suicides per 100,000 people. White males, particularly between the ages of 15-24 and ages 45 and up, were the highest risk group, with rates rising among teenagers steadily since 2008.
Some attribute it to societal pressures. Bromberg said he is sure that was a factor in his nephew’s death. He was only 20 when he chose to take his own life and had expressed concerns about being a failure.
“They don’t go out and look at suicide as an option,” Bromberg said. “It comes to them in the form of a chemical change in their brain. Many times it’s depression more than anything else. Other times it may be circumstances that can be changed, but people have to ask them.”
Bromberg said survivors he has spoken with said in almost every case that, although people noticed changes in them, no one asked whether they were considering suicide.
“They say, ‘No one ever knew I felt that way,’” he said. “They say, ‘Here I was going through this turmoil, and it was like a freight train that couldn’t be stopped and no one knew but me,’ I don’t think people do it so much for the romance or the attention of it. It’s honestly some type of change in the brain chemistry.”
He said that often, people don’t want to ask out of a fear of being rude or impolite. However, he said that if you begin noticing changes in your child, a friend or a classmate, you should be persistent.
“The hard part is asking and then what do you to when people admit to it?” he said. “I think what you can say to them is, ‘Whatever you’re feeling, it can be taken away. It can be fixed.’ And that’s true. But it isn’t going to be fixed if you don’t do anything.”
Even if asked whether they are feeling suicidal, many people won’t tell the truth due to a fear of being stigmatized.
“The world has forever made fun of crazy people,” Bromberg said. “It’s always been OK to mock those who are mentally ill.” He points to the usage of words such as “crazy,” “nuts” or “psycho” as slang.
Bromberg and other members of the AWARE group are combatting suicide the only way they know how – by raising awareness on the topic and giving people practical resources to combat suicide. They host meetings throughout the year with speakers who have survived suicide attempts and speakers who have lost loved ones to suicide.
“It’s difficult for people to want to pay attention because everybody thinks the same thing – that it won’t happen to them,” he said.
Unfortunately, statistics indicate that isn’t true. Bromberg recommends parents have conversations with their children as soon as they are old enough to understand the topic, even if they aren’t worried that it will become an issue.
“One of the great myths about suicide with your kids is that if you talk about suicide, they’ll commit suicide,” he said. “That’s dark age thinking. I knew a lot about suicide before I got into AWARE, but I didn’t know a way to take the warning signs and put them into action to get a desirable result, which in this case is prevention.
“You better start right now doing something so you can open the lines of communication.”
Bromberg said it’s important not only to discuss suicide, but to make sure children understand that, if they begin having suicidal thoughts in the future, they must be honest about it.
“Everybody always thinks that it will never happen to me – they don’t believe it,” he said. “But it will and it does. People have to keep talking about it and be able to recognize it. It’s going to be breaking down that barrier where you don’t feel a stigma to say, ‘I’m thinking about suicide,’ because it isn’t something that you choose. It picks you.”
