Parents (and their children) dread “the talk”. You know…the one about the birds and the bees. Almost no one looks forward to explaining to their adolescent about such things as condoms, sexually transmitted illnesses, and pregnancy. However, as difficult as it is, most parents try to find a way to talk with their sons and daughters about sex to prevent what can be life-altering problems. If you don’t have the hard talk about sex, then your young person will learn about the matter from someone else, maybe from an adult, but often from a peer or the internet. That kind of instruction is often ill informed and incomplete. If that’s true… don’t you think we should also be talking with our kids about suicide?
Sex and Suicide
As we discussed in Ep: 17 “What Parents Need to Know About Suicide, Part II: How Do You Know If Your Child Is Suicidal?,” suicide is the OTHER hard talk you need to have with your family, and especially with your kids. There are many parallels to discussing sex and suicide. Like sex, suicide is not an easy topic to broach with young people. So, how do you talk to your kids about suicide? Can you get your kids to listen? How can you answer questions they might have about the topic? How comfortable are you with the subject? And yet, as with sex, if you don’t talk about suicide with your young person, they will learn about it from someone else. Most often, that someone else will be another teen or young person. Does it make sense to have your child’s understanding about a life-threatening problem be based on the “wisdom” of another child?
Mental health, as well as physical health, starts in the home. Prevention of suicide is an issue which needs to begin in the family, just as sex education should not be totally delegated to the school, the media, or someone else. Why do you need to have the OTHER hard talk in your family? The answer is that suicide is NOT a rare occurrence among kids and young people. Indeed, the National Institute for Mental Health states that suicide is the number two cause of death of young people ages 10-34. And yet, most of us find it hard to conceive that our child could be at risk of suicide.
Prevention Is Better
Unfortunately, suicide usually only becomes a prominent topic after someone has died. When a school loses a child or teacher or parent to suicide, administrators often announce that extra mental health counselors will be available to students. Similarly, if a suicide occurs in a workplace, employee assistance counselors may visit the office or business. Wouldn’t it be great, though, if those mental health services were available beforehand to prevent the death? Speaking with kids and adults about suicide prevention is an effective way of helping. It turns out that such resources are often accessible, but people don’t necessarily utilize them. Sometimes, there is not enough funding for mental health programs. Or, it may be difficult to access those programs. Often, though, the problem of access comes down to pride and stigma. We may mistakenly think that suicide would never happen to people that we know or that only mentally ill people take their lives. Or we may believe that there is little one can do to prevent a suicide once a person has made a decision to end their life. These sorts of myths and misunderstandings about suicide are addressed in various episodes of our podcast. We encourage you to take the time to listen to our discussions of these topics.
In Closing…
As with sex, talking with your kids about suicide prevention is an important topic families should discuss. Suicide is unfortunately common among young people. Your kid’s understanding and opinion about suicide will likely be shaped by their peers unless we as parents seek to talk with our young people about the problem. For some people it is more embarrassing to ask for help than to die by their own hand. This need not happen. Suicide is preventable, but it begins by having the OTHER hard talk.