Flashback: Even Christian Kids Contemplate & Attempt Suicide

Flashback: Even Christian Kids Contemplate & Attempt Suicide

(As I’m doing research on teen suicide, I found the survey by Christian camp Falls Creek insightful and the Content/breakout session they did with the students. This is part of an article that we posted many years ago by Andy Harrison.)….(I decided to make a list information from previous articles ranging from Walt Mueller to Rooted Ministry )

In the summer of 2017, a Suicide Prevention breakout was offered at Falls Creek. Approximately 1,400 students and leaders attended the breakout, which was held each Tuesday and Wednesday of camp. At that breakout, we surveyed students with a few questions about how closely suicide had affected them. Here are the results:

Suicide Prevention

(1,347 people surveyed)

Do you know anyone who has considered suicide? YES—90 percent; NO—10 percent

Do you know someone who has attempted suicide or taken their life by suicide? YES—77 percent; NO—23 percent

Have you ever considered killing yourself? YES—49 percent; NO—51 percent

Have you ever attempted to kill yourself? YES—21 percent; NO—79 percent

It is absolutely alarming that more than 1 in 5 students indicated they had actually attempted suicide. This is a clarion call for help, to which the church must respond.

Students need to know that their life is valuable and that God created them with a glorious plan and purpose. No longer can the church be content dealing with this issue in the aftermath of death. We must build fences at the top of the cliff instead of continually doing triage at the bottom of it.

Churches must host suicide prevention clinics and seminars to build awareness and train people for intervention. Youth pastors need to build strong relationships and student networks to better monitor potential situations. Church leaders need to partner with schools to address this issue on a broad scale and to alert students as to where they can receive counseling and help.

Prov. 14:27 says, “The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, that one may avoid the snares of death.”

As the people of God we are guardians of the Gospel message, which is the key to life. We cannot be silent as death has its way with a generation. We must listen to the voices of those in peril and speak of the One who gives us abundant life and generously sustains it.

(More information)

We asked Jobes to walk us through a few other common misperceptions of suicide.

Myth 1: Asking someone about suicide will cause him to become suicidal

“There’s already issues and struggles around mental illness within our culture and society. It’s highly stigmatized, and suicide is even more stigmatized. It feels like something that’s just best left unsaid or untouched, kept under the rug, and that’s a problem in terms of saving lives. Because we need to ask, and we need to intervene to actually save lives. You need to be direct. ‘Sounds like you’re really down, have you thought about taking your life?’ Just very direct. The more direct the better.”

Myth 2: Depression causes all suicides

“That’s just not true. So, we have millions of Americans who are depressed. A small fraction of them take their lives, a very small fraction. So depression and suicide are not synonymous.

“On average, about a hundred and some Americans die each day [from suicide]. About 40 to 50 of them might be depressed. Other diagnoses are relevant — like schizophrenia, psychotic disorders, substance abuse, anxiety disorders. It’s not just all about depression.”

Myth 3: We cannot really prevent suicides

“We know very clearly that, with proper identification, proper support and treatments that are suicide-specific, we absolutely can make a difference and save lives. Most suicidal people who talk about suicide don’t really want to be dead. They’re giving other people lots of indications, lots of warning signs, lots of communications that this is something that they would like to not do, but it requires people identifying that and getting them the proper help.

“Some of the warning signs would certainly be depression and … loss of concentration. People not seeming like themselves. Insomnia can be a big risk factor. Other warning signs might include irritability, withdrawal. And the thing that’s really critical: Lots of people have those symptoms and are not thinking about suicide. It’s really when the symptoms add up in the mind of that person, where they think ‘The way I deal with this is to take my life.’ “

Myth 4: Suicides always happen in an impulsive moment

“People contemplate, think about it, imagine it, fantasize about it, write suicide notes, post things on the Web. After many days or weeks, [they] then perhaps make a fatal attempt. There is a major theory in the field that says that no suicides are impulsive. That there is always a history if you dig deep enough.

“The idea that they come out of the blue may happen, but it’s actually quite rare. A small number of people, especially among adolescents or school kids, are not going to communicate their intent. But that’s the exception. They’re going to be mostly letting their friends know, dropping hints, writing essays that their English teacher might pick up, telling teachers and coaches. So when people say this, they’re not crying wolf. It’s something to take seriously.

“Kids telling other kids is really critical because that’s who they’re gonna tell. They are not going to typically tell their parents. They get oftentimes a very negative reaction, even a punitive reaction. So, schools are in a position to try to communicate to kids that talking to your friends is fine, but if you really are a friend of this person, keeping a secret about something as serious as suicide is not in their best interest. And they need to pass that information up to teachers or the principal or to … counselors who are in a position to get professional help involved.”

Myth 5: Young children, ages 5 through 12, cannot be suicidal

“Young children do take their lives. In the United States each year, about 30 to 35 children under the age of 12 take their own lives.

“It’s hard for a lot of us to imagine that a child that young — a 5-, 6-, 7-year-old — could actually know what it means to say, ‘I want to kill myself.’ But we do research with young children and know that kids are saying these words.

“They do intend it, and they do sometimes take their lives. Oftentimes, by running into traffic and getting hit by a car. We don’t know a lot about young children taking their lives. The suicide prevention literature kind of begins at age 12 to 14. It’s almost as if, even in the professional literature, young children can’t be suicidal. And it’s just not the case.”

Myth 6: When there has been a suicide, having a school assembly seems like a good idea

“There’s literature and a professional take on all this that in post-vention, which is intervening after a suicide has occurred in a school, you want to find a response that is not overreacting, which would cause other kids to copycat or to follow that behavior.

“Alternatively, you don’t want to underreact. And so there is a very useful literature out there, professional associations that provide guidelines where we try to find that sweet spot of attending to the fact that this happened, providing necessary information and then resources, but not letting the whole school out to go to the funeral. Or not having an assembly where everybody comes to hear from an expert about suicide.

“We really want to have these conversations in smaller groups, especially among those kids who were most affected by the suicide. So, just a wholesale didactic event is not necessarily in the school’s best interest. And not necessarily the best way to prevent copycat suicides or additional suicides.

“The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention does have very useful guidelines that are specific to schools.

(Walt Mueller’s Post and Prayer on teen suicide)

Youth workers, parents, and others in the church need to be tuned in to kids, their experiences, their issues, and the difficult realities they are working to navigate. In addition, we need to be tuned in to the warning signs and cries for help that kids share. In order to help you with that, I’ve provided a link to a free downloadable pdf . . . Teen Suicide: Warning Signs and Cries For Help. . . that should be distributed widely among youth workers, parents, and everyone else who cares for and loves kids.

Finally, this is today’s prayer from Scotty Smith’s Everyday Prayers. Pray it for your kids struggling with depression. . .

Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. Ps. 43:5

Dear heavenly Father, this Scripture stirs me to pray for friends who struggle with various degrees of depression—friends living at various points on the axis between mild melancholy to the relentless pangs of suicidal depression. Father of mercies, grant me grace, teach me how to love in the complex and dark places.

Thank you for already rescuing me from simplistic views of depression. It’s not as simple a condition as I used to think. I grieve the ways I used to counsel the depressed, and it saddens me to realize how much pressure I put on them to get better and “get over it.”

David asked the right question in a season of duress: “Why, my soul, are you downcast?” (Ps. 43:5). Indeed, Father, what are the various reasons for a downcast, disturbed soul, and what does hoping in you look like for each?

Father, for friends who are depressed for no other reason than living as strangers to your mercy, grace and love—keep them restless until they rest in the riches of the gospel. May they redemptively despair until they are driven to the forgiveness, righteousness and peace that only come from faith in Jesus.

Father, for those whose dark emotions and skewed thinking are the result of unvoiced abuse, trauma triggers and yet-to-be healed heart wounds, bring your welcoming embrace, everlasting compassion, and healing grace to bear.

Father, for friends suffering from depression generated by anatomical anomalies—lead them to the right kind of medical care. Help us in the community of faith to be patient and understanding of the complexities involved in their care. The risk of abusing medications is always there—give us wisdom together.

Father, to your throne of grace, I bring those who suffer from depression fueled by demonic activity. Satan’s condemning, blaming, and shaming voice is enough to generate the deepest forms of despair. Show us how best to care for those under the spell and sway of our defeated, fury-filled foe (Rev. 12:12).

I do and I will yet praise you, my Savior and my God. My hope is in you, Father—for me and for my brokenhearted and dispirited friends. So very Amen I pray, in Jesus’ compassionate and victorious name.