We can't talk about it

An article entitled Our Young People Kill Themselves And We Can’t Say It Out Loud turned up recently on a NZ blog site called Military Models. The author's name isn't obvious from the site, and I suspect this blog post is a bit of an unusual one for them. 

The writer's main point is that the current Government policy doesn't allow suicides to be written about or reported at the time they happen, and while there is a move to change this policy it's not happening fast enough for many.  I note on Twitter that there's been a good deal of discussion about this recently, initiated to a great extent by SPINZ (Suicide Prevention Information New Zealand).

One of the comments relating to the article says:
What hits me most about this is not the hypocrit [sic] way of the officials, it is the fact that so many kids apparently cannot stand their life and go to this extreme. What is wrong in your country?
Apparently we have a very wrong concept of New Zealand here in Europe where for many it is a very desirable place to be. Maybe that is Peter Jackson´s fault…
There is a lot of pressure on kids everywhere in the western world today, but this sounds alarming.
Start by calling things by their name,but then go and find the root of this disease.

We know some of the issues - a lack of a spiritual base is one of them - but there is a good deal of work to be done to reduce the horrendous toll suicide takes on the lives of young people.

 

Video on the taboo topic of suicide

Though I haven't put anything on here for some time, and won't be doing so regularly, I thought it was worth uploading this video on people who have an ongoing struggle with suicidal thinking.

It comes from The Guardian's website - the mental health section, and concerns a home run by volunteers for people who need space to get away from the 'hurricane' outside...

Mental Health Webinars

I note that I haven't posted anything here since my birthday on the 13th May - things have been a little hectic, what with performing in the play, Shadowlands, and a variety of other things that needed to be done. This week I'm aiming to do a bit of catching up...(note the use of the word 'aiming'.)

The Mental Health Foundation is launching a new series of live and interactive online broadcasts in May aimed at answering the challenging question: “How Do We Talk About Suicide?”

The first of these took place on the 18th May, but there are further ones to come. They're taking the form of Webinars, online seminars which allow presenters to interact with an audience live over the internet.

Once registered, audience members are sent a link to a website where they can log on and view the presentation at the time of broadcast. Any questions that audience members have can be sent in confidence to the presenter during the broadcast by typing into a chat window provided on screen, and will form part of the interactive discussion.

Future broadcast subjects will include cultural perspectives on suicide prevention, coping with suicide bereavement, and advice for families on supporting a loved one with an ongoing mental health problems. You can read more about the programme here. (At this point future dates aren't yet listed.)

Samaritans and Facebook; Self-harm and You Tube

From a report released on Sky News:

The Samaritans and Facebook are teaming up to allow users to get help for friends they think might be having serious problems. Facebook has 30 million users in the UK and anyone concerned about people struggling to cope or with possible suicidal thoughts will be able to get help through the Help Centre.

The feature enables users to report specific content, like status updates or wall posts. For instance, typing the word "worried" into the help centre search engine will bring up a list of places to find advice as well as the option to report suicidal content. Once a report about suicidal content has been processed, the distressed person will be sent a message with information on how they can contact the Samaritans if they need help.

Samaritans chief executive Catherine Johnstone said: "We want to remind people that if a friend says that life isn't worth living, they should always be taken seriously. "Facebook is a part of daily life for so many of us and we must make sure that people online have support when they need it."

And connected to this, a brief report has been published called: The Scope of Nonsuicidal Self-Injury on YouTube. Early in the report they state:

The top 100 videos analyzed were viewed over 2 million times, and most (80%) were accessible to a general audience. Viewers rated the videos positively (M _ 4.61; SD: 0.61 out of 5.0) and selected videos as a favourite over 12 000 times. The videos’ tones were largely factual or educational (53%) or melancholic (51%). Explicit imagery of self-injury was common. Specifically, 90% of non-character videos had non-suicidal self-injury photographs, whereas 28% of character videos had in-action non-suicidal self-injury. For both, cutting was the most common method. Many videos (58%) do not warn about this content. [My italics]

Ten going on sixteen

Ten Going On Sixteen is a profile of young New Zealanders in the transition years put out by the Ministry of Youth Development.   The data was collected by Victoria University’s Youth Connectedness Project from 2006 to 2008.

"The research was designed to test the hypothesis that “connectedness” – to family, peers, school and community – is predictive of subsequent health and wellbeing of young people. The hypothesis was confirmed, with “connectedness to family and school” most strongly predictive of subsequent happiness, self sense of identity. "

While the report online is not particularly detailed (the spirituality section is very skimpy) is does highlight some interesting factors about young people, things that it might be useful for youth group leaders to know about. 

It shows that in general most children are happy with their parents and friends - boys in particular say they get on well with their families.   Girls tend to be happier when they're in the younger age range and grow less happy from the time they're 12.  Boys for the most part stay happy.  

In regard to the girls' decrease in happiness, this is mostly put down to the onset of puberty.  "Given that the average age that girls have their first period is 12-13, the explanation is likely to lie in the interaction between pubertal stage and social and cultural expectations.  The onset of puberty has already been linked to increase in depression and increased rates of self harm among adolescent girls.  In societies where expectations of girls are high, the levels of stress and anxiety among young women seem also to be higher."

There are a small group in both sexes who say they are sad most of the time around the time they're ten years old.   However, the report doesn't show whether these particular children had specific reasons to be sad.   Broken family relationships barely come into the report. 

It was a slight surprise to me to see how early many of the children are starting to drink alcohol. 

• Drinking becomes a normal behaviour for young people between the ages of 10 and 16.
• Between the ages of 12 and 14, the percentage of boys who say they drink alcohol on one or two days a month or more doubles - from 16 percent at age 12 to 35 per cent at age 14. 
• For girls the increase is even higher, from 13 per cent at age 12 to 44 per cent at age 14.
• At age 14, more girls than boys report drinking, but by age 16, the boys have caught up.
• At age 15, over half of the young people in the survey say that they drink alcohol on one or two days a month or more.
• At age 16, 71 per cent of boys and 66 per cent of girls say they drink alcohol one or two days a month or more.
• Around three per cent of the young people in this survey are ‘serious’drinkers, drinking on ten days a month or more.

The question has to be asked: where do they get the alcohol from?   

The survey was taken from around 50% European children, 30% Maori, and 20% of other ethnicities. 

Lifeline to potential suicides

Carolyn Thomas writes in the Western Leader

Lifeline Aotearoa cultural adviser George Hill thinks it's time to do something about suicide rates among young Maori. So the kaumatua from South Head's Haranui Marae is working alongside clinical director Dr Stephen Edwards to trial a community-based suicide prevention course.

A marae setting, cultural protocol and detailed introductions are among changes to a Canadian programme which is already taught in communities world-wide. The Applied Suicide Intermediate Skills Training or ASIST course teaches the basics of recognising signs of someone at risk of suicide and making the right response.

"It's almost like CPR," Mr Hill says. "It's about keeping that person alive until there is more comprehensive help." Dr Edwards says young Maori men are over-represented in the suicide statistics. "New Zealand has one of the highest suicide rates in the world compared to other OECD countries." [Read the rest of the article here.]

The YSPP site notes this about warning signs relating to suicide:

Most suicidal young people don’t really want to die; they just want their pain to end. About 80% of the time, people who kill themselves have given definite signals or talked about suicide. The key to prevention is to know these signs and what to do to help.

Watch for these signs. They may indicate someone is thinking about suicide. The more signs you see, the greater the risk.

• A previous suicide attempt
• Current talk of suicide or making a plan
• Strong wish to die or a preoccupation with death
• Giving away prized possessions
• Signs of depression, such as moodiness, hopelessness, withdrawal
• Increased alcohol and/or other drug use
• Hinting at not being around in the future or saying good-bye

These warning signs are especially noteworthy in light of:

• a recent death or suicide of a friend or family member
• a recent break-up with a boyfriend or girlfriend, or conflict with parents
• news reports of other suicides by young people in the same school or community

Other key risk factors include:

• Readily accessible firearms
• Impulsiveness and taking unnecessary risks
• Lack of connection to family and friends (no one to talk to)

[Mike Crowl notes:] Around 25 years ago, three young men who'd been connected with our church - and a fourth who went to another Pentecostal church - killed themselves. In each case the main reason was a recent breakup with a girl friend. We have a tendency to think that young men aren't affected by relationship break-ups - and certainly, many don't appear to be - but even without these 'warning signs' from ASIST, I would have placed this high on the list of possible reasons for a young man committing suicide.

God and Suicide

Chris Erdman preached a sermon on the Second Sunday of Lent this year, which focused to a great extent on the suicide of a close friend, Jamie Evans [photo] three days earlier.

The sermon needs to be read in full, but in this post I'd like just to quote three extracts relating to the way in which we continue to regard those who have a mental illness, by which I mean, and Erdman means, not necessarily those who wander the streets talking to themselves, or those who inhabit psychiatric hospitals sometimes for years on end, but those who live amongst us in the community and are suffering daily from the difficulties of (often severe) depression.

First, we must work to remove the stigma of mental illness, a stigma that keeps mental illness secret and hidden and dangerous.
Look, there’s no more shame in mental struggle, mental anguish, and mental illness than there is in high cholesterol or high blood pressure. We readily recognize our need for help in other areas of our lives. For God’s sake, why then do we consign people whose minds are troubled to the secret and lonely life of walking the road of clinical depression alone? We must end this secrecy! We must throw open the windows of our lives to the fact that to one degree or another we are all troubled, some of us more than others. In fact, there are more reasons to be struggling mentally, emotionally, and spiritually today than there are reasons not to. Let’s get that into our heads and learn to live more honestly and compassionately toward others as well as toward ourselves.

Second, self-care is not an option. We all need to learn to practice some kind of vulnerability, some kind of internal awareness of what's going on on the inside of our lives. There are many ways to do this.

Third, those who are in great mental and emotional pain need community.

We must become more educated about the signs of mental illness, and more able to recognize those signs in those around us, as well as in ourselves. Let’s face it; we’re not very aware of what’s going inside the skin of others, let alone ourselves. Our faces are buried in our cell phones; we’re glued to computer and TV screens. Our minds are fixated on the thought parade that never ceases to march through our brains. The noise of this modern world drowns out true awareness. We look but cannot see; we hear but do not listen; we walk the paths of daily life but aren’t very aware of what’s really going on around us.

When you’re aware, truly aware, you slow down. You listen. You see things others, in their busyness and distraction, do not see. You sense what others cannot sense. Awareness is the ability to see beneath the surface, to detect the subtle changes in the emotional climate within you and within those around you. You see it in their eyes. You hear it in the tone of voice. You sense it in their touch.

Awareness is a particularly Christian virtue—a way to be fully here, to be completely in this present moment because you know God holds all things, you know God loves this world, and you know God is at work to bring about the goodness we all seek. Awareness is necessary for community. You cannot build a community when you’re distracted.

Erdman discusses the way in which he believes God looks after those who've committed suicide. For decades the church labelled them as people who'd committed an unforgivable sin. Erdman, (and I suspect, Jesus Christ) doesn't think that's the case.

SPINZ Symposium

At the SPINZ National Symposium 2009, the following paper will be presented: Emergency department re-presentations following intentional self-harm by Silke Kuehl and Dr Kathy Nelson.

The abstract is as follows:
A retrospective observational design was selected for a period of one year and data was collected from electronic clinical case notes. The sample consisted of 48 people with 73 presentations and re-presentations.

This study made several discoveries:
many re-presentations (55%) occurred within one day;
the exact number of people who re-presented many times to ED is unknown, but is far higher than reported in other studies;
fewer support people were present for the second presentation;
the documentation of triage and assessments by ED staff was often minimal, though frequently portrayed immense distress of this population;
cultural input for Maori was missing;
physical health complaints and psychosis were found with some intentional self-harm presentations; challenging behaviours occurred in at least a quarter of presentations;
the medical and mental health inpatient admission rates were approximately 40% higher for second presentations.

Recommendations in regard to the use of a triage assessment tool, cultural input for Maori and the need for a mental health consultation liaison nurse in ED will be made. Staff education, collaboration between services with consumer involvement and further research of this group are required.

Further to this, the link above goes to the list of talks to be given at this Symposium. There are a number of culturally-concerned topics, both Maori and Pasifika, as well as some basics regarding suicide prevention. Anyone with a concern for people tending towards suicide should try and make time to attend.

The NZ Tui (in the photo) is used as a kind of logo on the SPINZ site - photo by 'North of Auckland'

Suicide and Recession

In an article in the latest SPINZ (Suicide Prevention Information NZ) newsletter, Dr Sunny Collings writes:

Recent articles in the media have suggested that the recession is having an impact on suicide rates. For example, in the UK a death by suicide was reported as being the ‘first suicide due to the economic downturn’. Irrespective of the details of the individual case, this claim is an oversimplification. The causes of suicide are complex and both individual level factors and societal/cultural factors are important.

Suicide rates rose in New Zealand during the Great Depression with a peak in 1930. The international rise in suicide rates during the Depression was probably due to the rise in unemployment. Evidence of a link between unemployment and suicide has been shown in New Zealand, with an odds ratio of about 2.5, meaning that people who are unemployed are more likely to complete suicide.

However, mental disorder was estimated as accounting for about half of the increased risk.

Dr Collings discusses the connections - or lack of them - further in the article, which is available online. Basically, unemployment - particularly for men - can add hugely to stress in a person's life, but it's usually only when it's added to an existing state of unwellness that the risk of suicide increases.

Getting it off your chest

While the information in the report discusssed below pertains to Great Britain, most of it is very relevant to the New Zealand scene.
The report is called: Men and Mental Health – get it off your chest. It has some interesting and occasionally surprising things to say about men’s mental health.
One of its recommendations, for instance, is that health professionals should take gender into account when discussing treatment options with men. In other words, men have tended to be treated as less important in the mental health scene for a number of reasons which are discussed during the report.
Amongst these are a tendency for services are often ‘feminised.’
Many men ‘act out’ when having mental health issues, which often leads them to be criminalised because of their anti-social behaviour. The report reminds us that professionals need to recognise that ‘aggressive and violent behaviour is a potential indicator of mental distress.’
Men feel more comfortable discussing their issues in men-only groups, and if men are unemployed for too long they are likely candidates for depression. While partners or spouses may understand the man’s mental health, other family members often deride it.
There is also some discussion of mental health and gays, blacks and other minorities, and the elderly. Altogether this report makes essential reading.

For more information about men's groups, check out this article from the Sunday Star-Times, April 2009

In your face video about suicide

Life: a Message of Hope for a Generation in Despair.

This British-made video (from Wales) is about ten minutes long, and consists of an introduction in which a guy with a shaved head goes full on at the camera telling us that the suicide is one aspect of the approach of the 'thief who comes to destroy', and that Jesus came to 'give us life'. Following this are three young people, all of whom have tried to commit suicide as well as self-harming on several occasions. Their testimonies have an edgy and scary reality, and they don't hold back on what's happened to them. In each case, Jesus has literally been their salvation. The video ends with the first guy inviting people to think about what they've seen and get in touch with them at igniteme.org.

It was made in response to a recent spate of youth suicides in South Wales, and stars Ignite's Mark Beacher, Dai Hankey, Richard Stanton and Jess Wilson.



Check it out: it's a great and sobering resource for young people, and may well save lives.

Suicides and Attendance at Church

The following paragraph comes from the Washington Times.
Psychiatric researchers at the University of Manitoba have established a link, they say, "between a person´s attendance at a religious worship service" and the desire to commit suicide.
No, this doesn't quite mean what it appears to say. Here's the next paragraph:
"The main finding of this study is that religious worship attendance is associated with a decreased risk of suicide attempts," said Daniel Rasic, who led the research. The findings were based on health surveys of 37,000 Canadians which included information about their spirituality - and specifically - their church attendance.
The article goes on to say that it's the people who actually attend church, rather than those who just consider themselves 'spiritual' who find themselves less inclined towards suicide. The study doesn't come to any conclusions as to why potentail suicides should be less suicidal as a result of attending church, but it's a good point to note, all the same.

More on TheLowdown.co.nz

The New Zealand Ministry of Health won a gold EFFIE in the SOCIAL MARKETING / PUBLIC SERVICE category for TheLowdown.co.nz website, which is part of its National Depression Initiative created to help young New Zealanders understand and recover from depression.

The aim of the website is to reduce the impact of depression on youth by encouraging them to seek help. Young people are notorious for not going to GPs or using other support services. They are difficult to engage, even with issues that interest them, let alone with an issue that they don’t understand and that still carries a social stigma.

One in seven young Kiwis will experience serious depression over the next 12 months, a condition closely linked to suicidal behaviour.

TheLowdown.co.nz is a leading edge multimedia website where musicians and celebrities shared their experiences of depression. A place where youth can learn about depression, take a self-test, listen to NZ music, talk to their peers via a message board and receive professional support via free text messaging and email support services.

Brian van den Hurk, DraftFCB General Manager, says, “With the sobering statistics for youth depression and suicide it is crucial that we help young people to deal with and recover from depression. TheLowdown.co.nz has been created for them to get help as quickly as possible. If they can develop their skills in coping with what life throws at them, they can have more control over their future."

Details from a Scoop report

Living Works

Suicide is an ongoing concern in the mental health area, with the NZ Maori population being even more hard hit by it than the European one, particularly amongst younger people.

One group that is focused on ways to prevent suicide is Living Works.
Their website says the following:

[Our] programs were developed in response to a growing concern about suicide. They recognise that many who consider suicide would rather live if they could find support to stay safe and deal with painful problems in living. Their suicides are preventable.

Many things can help prevent suicide. LivingWorks focuses on increasing the awareness, knowledge and skills of caregivers - resourcing them to play a more informed, active suicide prevention role.

Vision: enhancing resources today, saving lives for tomorrow.

Mission: to create learning experiences that help communities prevent suicide.

Aim: to support sustainable, life-assisting resources.

Outcome: for the benefits to live on.

Chinese Good Samaritan

An article appeared in the Otago Daily Times World Focus last Monday about a man who spends a good deal of his free time stopping people from committing suicide on the Nanjing Bridge, which flows over the Yangtze River. So far he has managed to stop some 144 people from jumping to their deaths.

The article says the man's motivation is the feeling of guilt he was left with after an older man who had encouraged him when he was down and out subsequently committed suicide because of troubles he hadn't been able to share.

The full article first appeared in the Los Angeles Times, and can be accessed here.

It's well worth reading for an example of how God works to save lives by a modern day Samaritan, who appears to have no Christian motivation.

NZ Suicide Prevention Action Plan

The NZ Suicide Prevention Action Plan 2008-2012 was released on Monday 17 March.

The Action Plan builds on the NZ Suicide Prevention Strategy 2006-2016 released in 2006, and provides more detail about how the high level goals of the Strategy can be achieved over the next five years. The Action Plan is made up of two companion documents, which are best read together:
The Summary for Action outlines what the actions are, who will do them and by when.
The Evidence for Action discusses the evidence and context underlying the actions
- read Action Plan
- read Hon Jim Anderton's speech at the launch of the Action Plan

SANE advertising

This effective 'road' sign comes from a campaign being run by SANE Australia. There's a brief video ad on the site from a campaign focusing on mental health. One of the main messages SANE is promoting is that often close family members see the signs even before the person who's having mental health problems. This leads to them needing to encourage the person to get help. The campaign is similar to the one shown in NZ in regard to depression.
It's an importantpoint to note that:

The 2005-2006 data shows that the rate of suicide is higher for Mâori (17.9 per 100,000) than non-Mâori (12.0 per 100,000). This disparity has increased over the past nine years.
While fewer Mâori people died by suicide in 2005 than in 2004, the three year moving average rates - a more robust measure of what’s happening over time – show the Mâori suicide rate has increased by 5.2 percent from 2002-2004 to 2003-2005.

Addressing the needs of Mâori is particularly important because Mâori also have poorer outcomes in other areas relating to suicide. For example, depression is a major risk factor for suicide. Te Rau Hinengaro: The New Zealand Mental Health Survey shows that Mâori report higher rates of depression than all other ethnic groups, and, with the exception of Pacific peoples, are less likely to access services for a mental health problem.

Suicide and Occupation

A report has recently come out called Suicide and occupation in New Zealand, 2001-2005. It's published by the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, 14, 45-50.

It's published by Gallagher,L.M., Kliem, C.,Beautrais, A.L., Stallones,L. (2008)

You can access the full text online for free (although you have to register first, but that's free as well).

A total of 2,024 suicide deaths were reviewed. Being non-waged was seen as being a risk factor for suicide and those working in farming, fisheries, forestry and the trades had higher suicide rates. The article discusses the reasons including the depressive effect of chronic pesticide exposure and toxic chemicals amongst farmers and tradespeople.