COLUMN: We can no longer ignore bullying and the link to youth suicide

PAUL HOPKINS

There was a young man in our community who, at 19 years old, took his own life. He wasn’t the first to do so. A hugely popular teenager from a popular family, so it was of little surprise that the whole town shut down and the church was out the door on the day of his funeral.
In the crowd of mourners was a young girl who, like her fellow teens who had come to pay their last respects, was quite taken aback that the whole town should shut down in order to say goodbye to their young friend.

"I’d love a big turnout like this at my funeral," she was overheard whispering to her friends during the service.
A week later, on a Monday, she booked a table for two at her favourite restaurant for the Wednesday night as a birthday present for her mother. They never had that dinner. On the Tuesday she committed suicide.

But the reality was that she was in no way as well-known or as popular as the young man had been and so her funeral was a more simple, quietly attended, though nonetheless sad, affair.
It seems to me that, in her efforts to be as popular as her friend had been, she had taken that ultimate, drastic step and showed how, in reality, young people do not fully grasp the utter finality of taking their own lives. They fail to see the enormity of the pain for the families and friends left behind.
Death by suicide, particularly among our young people, is still devastating our communities, with the island of Ireland having the fourth highest rate of teen suicide in Europe — after Lithuania, Finland and Estonia.
The latest figure from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) shows that in 2017 there were 392 recorded suicides, down slightly from 399 in 2016, with neighbouring Co Monaghan having the highest rate last year. In men, suicide is more common particularly in those who are 15 to 24 years old, with young women between 15 and 24 having a low risk.

Bullying, sadly, has been cited once too often during a coroner's inquest into the death by suicide of a young person. The CSO figures come just weeks after a Unicef survey shows that almost half of Ireland’s students aged 13 to 15 report having experienced peer-to-peer violence in and around school. An Everyday Lesson: #ENDviolence in Schools says that peer violence — measured as the number of children who report having been bullied in the last month or having been involved in a physical fight in the last year — is a pervasive part of young people’s education in Ireland — affecting student learning and well-being.

“Our new report shows that 44 per cent of students in Ireland aged 13 to 15 report either being bullied or being involved in physical fights with their peers. This must be addressed," says Unicef Ireland Executive Director Peter Power. “Experiencing violence has serious effects on a child’s well-being, and in the long-term it can lead to depression, anxiety and even suicide."
Obviously, not every death by suicide is linked to bullying but the connection in too many cases is sadly obvious. A single remark, a single tweet, a single online comment — that is all it takes for a young teen to become so helpless and lost that they take their own life.

We may never truly know, nor understand, why people, and young people in particular, choose to die by suicide.
The young think themselves invincible — as we all once did — until they end up another statistic on the mortuary slab. Perhaps it’s an inherent defence mechanism given us humans as young cubs to get us through life, but that belief about being invincible is often an integral part of youth suicide.
Even in their desperate deed of despondency, some somehow believe that, after they commit suicide and "everyone is sorry" or "the pain has gone away", they can move on to another day’s 'drama', of which there is little shortage in all our lives.

It’s difficult to put an old head on young shoulders but we must at the very least, guard against bullying or the early signs of such, and reach out to our young and show them that their problems, however daunting they might seem right now, are not insurmountable.
That it's OK not to feel OK. That death at such a tender age is never the answer...

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