I went to a funeral today for a 17 year old that committed suicide. I am friends with his grandfather.

Yes I was young once but it is so hard to understand why young people feel that death is their only option.

As I listened to his friends and family talk about him, I can see he had an extremely bright future ahead of him.

He was somewhat successful in sports. He had a lot of friends. He was popular and funny. His family loved him. He's had a girl friend or three. He had made some money. (He did a few commercials, had a cameo on a tv show and a decent part in a movie.) There was enough for college if that was the route he chose to go.

No one in the family saw this coming. No change in his demeanor.

Suicide is the 2nd highest cause of teen deaths.

It's very sad for everyone.

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Man that sucks, such a waste.

Kid's brains and psyches are so vulnerable. They don't have time to be kids anymore. They don't have the ability to make mistakes without 200 camera phone catching it....and all their friends succumbing to woke culture and unfriending them.

Plus the libs are telling them that the world is going to end so what does it matter.

Growing up today is so much tougher than when we were kids.

That's why I love the PSA's by Michael Phelps regarding getting help.

I feel bad for you and your buddy.

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Mental Health issues seem to be getting worse.

You have to wonder with all the pressures that kids grow up under, unrealistic expectations as nobody is allowed to fail and the breakdown of the family have let so many vulnerable.

God bless young man. Suicide doesn't stop things getting worse as family and friends are left to pick up the pieces. It stops the chances of it getting better.

Wayne, I’m sorry to hear of this.
One of the hardest things to handle, is not knowing why. It sounds like this young man had so much going for him.
It’s hardest for his parents and grandparents and other loved ones.
They will feel guilt for not seeing this coming, and not being able to stop it.
Please let your friend know that I’m truly sorry to hear about this.
Just be there for him.

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Terribly sorry to hear this. I hate hearing youths being hurt, or hurting themselves. So much yet to live for and that is not realized.

As someone who's been at those ropes, I would say it is not considered the only option, but, rather an option we don't understand the permanency of. It's the "easy" way out of troubles. At least, that is how I saw it myself.

Suicidal thoughts/tendencies are all around us. One of my daughters came to me saying one of her friends told her she was thinking of suicide. I replied "that is good she told you". I received a very confused and not happy look from my daughter who cut me off saying "What!". I realized I had to explain that in my experiences, those who talk about suicide are reaching out for help and have no actual intention of following through. After explaining this to my daughter, I said she trusts you, this is a call for help. Talk to her, listen to her, pay attention to her and be a good friend. Stay by her side through the tunnel until she sees the light.

A person can smile and not be happy. A person can be funny and be dying inside. Until we truly appreciate this, I don't think mental health will improve.

It seems we no longer seem to stop to smell the roses. I believe if we were to do that, we would probably notice the signs.

My rambling aside, I am very sorry Wayne.

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I don’t see that what you said was “rambling” , Kevin. I see it as important info. You never know WHO might be reading these threads, and it might be someone in a similar situation that doesn’t know how to approach the subject. You may be helping someone, and not even know it.
I went through it myself when I was sixteen. My Dad died, and my world fell apart. I sat in my bed with my rifle under my chin, crying. What stopped me was knowing that my Mom was downstairs, and what it would have done to her had I followed through.
It was enough to keep me from doing something terrible.
And here i am, still around 46 years later.

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Mental illness is pretty tricky and if you don't suffer from it personally, it's exceptionally hard to understand just how deeply it affects people, even to the point of having death feel like a far better option than continuing to live. Even worse, is when people that don't get it, aren't really interested in getting it and would rather blame "Culture", "Kids these days", or even worse call them ungrateful for what they have than actually sit down and make a legitimate effort to try to understand where someone is coming from.

Suicide's a pretty personal topic for me, as I've suffered from depression and other contributing issues (ADHD, tourettes, anxiety) my entire life. When I was about 14 I was overwhelmed with school, constant harassment and assault (I hate the term 'bullying', call things what they are) at school, and I literally saw no way out. Luckily at the time I was an idiot and my method of trying to kill myself was "Down every pill I could find and a bunch of listerine to try to poison myself", and somehow I didn't destroy my liver in the process. There's various other times I've flirted with trying to kill myself but realistically wasn't serious enough about it to go through but did things like trying to drown myself or suffocate in a bag or such through my teens and early adulthood. I definitely still think about it from time to time, and on rare occasions have self-harmed but generally speaking I'm a lot more stable... But there's only so much a stable job, healthy habits and diet, exercise, an open mind, therapy, medication, and hobbies can do to try to "fix" something broken with your brain.

My best friend came home on christmas day a couple years ago to find her roommate and friend had hung herself a couple days earlier. This came after another suicide attempt a couple weeks earlier that she didn't realize at the time was a suicide attempt (Took a bunch of sleeping pills, ended up getting hospitalized). She's talked to me a lot about it in bits and pieces and actually went into a lot of detail about it with me this last weekend and I can tell it's been on her mind a lot lately. She fell short of a clinical diagnosis of PTSD but definitely had full blown flashbacks randomly triggering from anything from seeing a belt (which her friend hung herself with), to a dimly lit room, to a random shadow for a good 8-10 months afterwards. My best friend herself suffers from depression and while I don't think she will kill herself at any point, the way her brain is wired is incompatible with modern living and will always struggle to get her basic needs met.

My father in law, pretty much the definition of a Fox News watching conservative "Suck it up!" 62 year old (whose shitty bootstrap mentality attitudes and general lack of understanding for my wife's issues during childhood has racked up quite a lot of therapy bills for her), has tried killing himself a couple times with pills and my wife spent 3 months during and after a hospitalization helping keep their family business together and keep an eye on him when my mother in law needed to work to keep him away from pills and the gun cabinet. I only mention his political beliefs due to a comment in this thread that seemed to want to blame things on liberalism which I found to be particularly dense and objectionable, almost to imply that being miserable to the point of legitimately wanting to die to the point of overriding the survival instinct is a matter of attitude or personal/political beliefs.

My girlfriend (for context as many of you know I'm married - I'm also poly) has seen her best friend cut herself down to the bone, and while she's doing a lot better nowadays, there's only so much you can do for borderline personality disorder and she more or less expects her to kill herself at some point.

I don't have a very kind view of people that see these sorts of things as a matter of poor attitude, culture, or personal choice. These things definitely can be contributing factors, but anybody that sees these are core reasons is willfully ignorant and I frankly find it insulting given the sort of shit I've gone through as well as the stories I've heard from others important to me in my life.

Porforis,

That was very powerful...thanks for sharing.

My point on climate change/end of the world hyperbole was not to be political, although reading it again, I can see that it was unnecessary...so apologies in that regard. Regrettably, it took away from the greater point which is that there is not much optimism in popular culture or politically when kid look at the news. That negativism doesn't help.

The negativism, harassment and assault you suffered are so unfair and damaging. I am sorry you had to endure them, and glad you survived them.

Again your experiences and observations are greatly appreciated.

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You definitely have an on-subject point regarding lack of optimism in some of the younger generations about the future - whether individual or collective. I don't think grand things like "Well, the world's going to get gradually more fucked in the decades to come" contribute majorly to suicide rates so much as powerful, more immediate things that affects individuals. But, let's stay away from a debate on the politics of any of these.

I'm not particularly bent out of shape over anything that happened to me as a kid at this point, yeah I wish I wouldn't have gone through a lot of that stuff but kids are dicks. I'm all for making the world a better place for kids growing up nowadays though, and my attention's focused on that and my own personal life.

Interesting comments. I appreciate your contributions. It's a sensitive subject. I am pretty sure everyone has been effected in some way by a suicide or attempted suicide.

I have a sister in law and 2 brother in laws that have attempted. One b-i-l was successful. His son found him.

My daughter had to check into a hospital for a week of treatment and counseling.
My son has PTSD.
My wife has taken pills to control her issues.

I look around and think there has to be a better way to decal with this problem. So many people are breaking. The way society views mental health issues has improved in the past 50 years. And even more so in the past 100 years but I think we have a long long way to go.

My secretary's youngest daughter was extremely troubled last year. Either written up or suspended from school on a number of occasions. She's 10. They tried many different medications to no avail. Finally as the school year was just about over they finally found a doctor who actually cared enough to listen to what the mom was telling him. This year has been a lot better.

I think I mentioned it here before but one of the things my son said to me is that everyone should have a professional counselor, social worker or therapist to talk to. Someone who will listen to them and let them get things off their chest. We have not gotten that far in our society to allow this. Perhaps some day we will.

Edit- I think one of the things I like about our packer home is we can do that here, to some extent.

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