For the most part, I find that they have done nothing wrong, but they feel guilty anyway. They feel guilty for not calling, not writing, not this, not that. They feel guilty for not being better friends. Oh, how guilty they feel! They feel guilty for missing all those clues. Discharge your anger while doing something positive, like collecting money to buy sports equipment for your school or clearing litter from some part of town with special meaning to the friend who died.Īnother common reaction teens often tell me about is guilt. Instead, think of energy-consuming projects you and your friends could take on. Just be careful not to take your anger out on the wrong people. If you are feeling angry toward your friend, you should understand that this doesn't diminish your love for him. What distorted thinking went into his fateful decision can never be known, but one thing is clear: No matter what the circumstances, no matter what mental or physical suffering it is intended to end, a suicide hurts a lot more people than the one person who takes that desperate act. Anger could be a very legitimate response when you think about the pain that this rash act has brought to innocent people like his parents and other survivors. If that is how you feel, you should not think it wrong to be angry with your dead friend. If they don't, you should arrange to see a counselor who can help you shake them.Ī second concern to most of the suicide survivors I have talked with are feelings of anger. In any case, these images should fade in a few weeks. Rumors among classmates and friends sometimes get badly distorted. If you are tormented by such thoughts, it might be that your imagination is depicting a scene far worse than what really happened. Teens I have met with tell me they can't help thinking about how their friends died, painting in their mind's eye scenes that would fit in a horror movie. If you are among the tens of thousands of teens who have lost a friend through suicide, you may be haunted by the memory of this terrible event. Timely help could save your friend's life. Share your concerns with a school counselor or another adult. If you should observe signs like that in a friend, don't keep it to yourself. That last clue could be a sign that the person has a plan to end his or her misery. This is not to say that there aren't clues to be looking for: depression and hopelessness, a fascination with the subject of suicide, preoccupation with death, loss of interest in things formerly cared about, giving one's belongings away, making unusual, goodbye-sounding visits or phone calls to close friends, and-the hardest one to recognize at the time-very suddenly appearing calm and happy when nothing else has changed. And when it comes to such dark thoughts as ending one's life, people seldom are willing to reveal precisely what their intentions are. This is because you can never know really what another person is thinking. I have met with many, many teens who have had to deal with a friend's suicide, and in every case they have been left wondering how they missed the signs of approaching disaster.
The boy or girl who takes his own life will never know the many, often enduring consequences of that act of self-destruction, but his or her survivors surely will!
Think of it: 5,000 kids who had their whole lives ahead of them-suddenly gone.įor every one of those suicides, there are many others-parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, close friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, and more-who are left shattered, wondering what they could have done to prevent this catastrophe and wrestling with feelings of guilt for not acting in time. The government says that suicide is the third-leading cause of death between the ages of 15 and 24, taking the lives of some 5,000 young people in the United States every year. The self-inflicted death of a close friend is one of the most devastating experiences a teen can have, yet it is disturbingly common today.
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