Preventing Suicide Among Young People

"Suicide happens when pain becomes greater than the ability to cope with pain." That is a quote from a suicide prevention web-page. I disagree. Suicide happens when you lose the faintest hope that the pain will lessen or go away. Even though you cannot cope with the pain, you usually hang on until that last glimmer of hope is extinguished. You can lose everything and still come out ahead, if you hang on to hope. Gone With the Wind's Scarlet O'Hara in the root garden behind the ruins of Tara still had hope. A Bataan survivor I interviewed told me one difference in those who survived and those who might have been in better shape but didn't make it, was hope. The Biblical Job sitting in his rags amid the ashes of his life held on to hope.
That is the tragedy of teen suicide. They are so young and have so little experience with pain that they can't gauge of the amount of pain a human can take. Human beings are amazingly resilient; we can survive a tremendous amount of pain. The story of the Utah rock climber trapped by a fallen boulder, that amputated his own arm below the elbow and then walked several miles out of a desert canyon, is an example of what humans can take. The mothers that lost children and created an organization against drunken driving (MADD) show how some have coped with the ultimate pain.
Unfortunately, our culture magnifies the lack of experience of youth by shielding young people from stories involving pain. Sometimes we miss the chance to talk about survival, because we don't talk about things that hurt us or others in front of children. We don't want to scare or upset our children, so we often keep knowledge from them that might let them better understand surviving pain. We need to make sure they understand that there is no "happily ever after." We don't want to traumatize our children, but we need to let them know the world is not perfect, and they will without a doubt at different times in their lives experience pain. If they see how their parents and other adults have experienced pain and still survived, then the knowledge will be tangible for them. We don't want to make them sad, but we do want to make them strong. It is important to give them that spark of hope that will not be extinguished.