REACHING OUT AFTER SPATE OF TEEN SUICIDES
GLOBE WEST 1 NEEDHAM
Parents liken the experience to going down a rabbit hole: A bottomless pit of self-questioning and self-blame that follows a child's suicide. "How did we let this happen? Was it something we failed to do?"
Richard Gatto has been asking himself those questions for 18 months, since that Tuesday before Thanksgiving when two Needham police officers stepped into his office in the town center to tell him that his youngest son, Gregory, had killed himself in his dormitory at Hofstra University. He was 19.
Gatto talked about Gregory in the hope that others in despair will reach out for help, that they realize how much their lives mean to those they would leave behind.
He did so as Needham grappled with its fourth teen suicide in two years.
Last Thursday night, parents, students, and religious leaders held a vigil in honor of a 17-year-old high school student.
Psychologists and suicide prevention organizations will rattle off the warning signs: withdrawing from friends and family, increased use of drugs and alcohol, dramatic mood changes, changes in sleep habits.
But, said Gatto, "the bullet points don't quite do it. ... We didn't see it coming." In high school, Gregory Gatto volunteered for the home-building effort Habitat for Humanity. He played basketball and co-captained the football team. In 2004, he started at Hofstra University on Long Island with hopes for trying out for the football team in spring. He kept in regular touch with his family during his first semester, coming home in October to see the Red Sox beat the Yankees in the playoffs.
Nothing, his father said, prepared the family for what happened Thanksgiving week. At first, Gatto experienced "total shock." "Then there's feeling his loss and absence and trying to get through the days," he said. "Then you get analytical. How did we not know it?"
Gatto and his wife, Claudia, joined a support group with four other families who had lost loved ones to suicide. They started out meeting weekly; now they still get together every other week. "It's a way to share stories with people who understand how you feel, and to learn to forgive yourself," Gatto said. The challenge is to live in the present, he said. "You tend to replay moments."
Above his desk at the Gatto Agency, a real estate and insurance firm, is a collage of family photos. Among the pictures is one of Gregory, a handsome teenager with high cheekbones, lightly tanned skin, and sparkling eyes. "He could light up a room with a smile. He didn't tend to get real serious," his father said. Gatto said he likes to keep reminders of his son - trophies and photos - with him throughout the day. But he realizes the danger of getting stuck in memories. "I still have to earn a living," he said. "Part of honoring Greg is getting back to working on things we really value and believe in."
A Town Meeting member and a commissioner on the Needham Housing Authority, Gatto has a passion for helping people own their own houses. His family has traveled to Central America to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. The Gattos's other sons, ages 22, 25, and 28, live in the area. "We take turns picking each other up," he said. "My three sons pretty much sustained my wife and me in the beginning."
Baffled friends Gregory's friends and others in town also helped them get through the past year. And, after last week's death, the community again came together. Scores of teens and their parents attended Thursday's vigil at Temple Beth Shalom. It was hosted by the Needham Youth Commission, which held separate discussions with teens and parents. In a room of more than 50 teenagers, tears mixed with talk.
"I feel like we're back to square one," said Rachel Presskreischer, a high school senior who was close friends with a student who killed herself in October. "We only talk about it when it happens," said another student. "By December, it was gone," she said of the group discussions about the suicide. A student at Pollard Middle School was upset that her teachers kept quiet about last week's death. "They didn't tell us about it. We're getting close to high school," she said.
The teens asked two youth counselors why people choose to end their lives. "Is it chemical?" a girl asked. Presskreischer, whose parents are psychologists, told her classmates, "My dad explained it to me as you're in such a hole that you can't even see around it." She recalled how she felt last fall as she watched her friend slip in and out of depression. On good days, her friend was witty, "loud," eager to say what was on her mind. On bad days, she avoided phone calls. She lost interest in activities and drifted from one group of friends to another.
In a phone interview, Presskreischer, 18, said her friend often tried to conceal her depression. "She would make it seem like we were helping her," she said. "She didn't want people to know how bad she was feeling." Presskreischer said that despite her parents' best efforts to ease her mind, she still thinks to herself, "Even though I tried so hard, I still failed." She said she tries to hold onto the good memories, like the time "we kidnapped her" from a New Year's party and ended up at a 7-Eleven posing for photos with members of a popular college band.
At the vigil, many of the students wanted to know what Needham plans to do to prevent future suicides. A challenge to the town Youth Commission director Jon Mattleman said he is forming a task force of parents, students, and teachers to educate youths about suicide and risky behavior.
Mattleman, who is 49, has directed the commission for a decade. He acknowledged that after the latest suicide, he's been hearing questions like "Why can't you stop this? Why isn't the Youth Commission doing more?" Though he said he didn't work with the teenager who most recently killed himself, Mattleman said he finds the pattern disturbing. "In some ways this is demoralizing," he said. He said that in a minority of cases youngsters are so mired in depression that they can't be saved, no matter how strong the support system of after-school programs, counseling, family vigilance, and hospital care.
When this happens, Mattleman said, "I feel guilty. I feel, whatever I've done, could we have done more?" What keeps him going, he said, is that in most cases, the support system helps.
Some teens at the vigil expressed resentment that adults seem to brush off their problems by hiring counselors. Vikki Clair, a Youth Commission clinician who led the teen discussion, summed up their feelings: "Sometimes people say, well, call in a counselor and it will get better. You're saying, `It's not working."'
"Adults are too casual with telling us what to do," said Rose Siersdale. Another girl said, "Adults are scared that kids are going to go off on the wrong track." "I think kids are, too," Clair said quietly.
Mattleman said that parents often ask him at what point they should intervene in their children's lives. "Even though kids are pushing you away, kids want you to save them," he said he tells parents. He said parents have to let their kids approach them when they feel like it, even if that may be at an inconvenient time like late at night.
Mattleman suggested that parents who sense a problem should consider dropping their kids an e-mail, inviting them to talk whenever they're ready. He said the note could be as simple as "I know you're going through a rough time. I'm here if you need to talk." But, he added, "You can't inundate kids with `I love you, let's talk. I love you, let's talk."'
Addressing the vigil, Needham High principal Paul Richards said: "The kids are saying there's something wrong with Needham." Richards cautioned against putting the blame on drugs, the pressure of schoolwork, or high expectations at home. "Let's not rush to put a simple answer on this issue," he said.
SHARED RESOLVE, GRIEF ON SUICIDES; Schools ramp up preventive services
GLOBE WEST 1 / NEEDHAM, WELLESLEY
The homemade poster hanging this week in the main corridor of Wellesley High School is part sympathy card, part sad, solidarity gesture.
Covered in signatures from Needham's class of 2007, it is the equivalent of a hug to grieving counterparts in Wellesley that says: "We're sorry for your loss. We know how you're feeling. We've been there."
Last week, a 17-year-old Wellesley High senior became the third member of the school's class of 2007 to die by suicide in the past three years.
"People wonder if it is something about the community. People worry about the stresses on kids. People struggle with finding a balance between not glorifying and not ignoring what happened," said Robert Evans, director of the Human Relations Service, a Wellesley community mental health clinic that offers counseling at the high school.
These are questions Needham also has been forced to confront. Between 2004 and 2006, four teenagers from the town took their own lives. Last June, town and school officials formed the 38-member Needham Coalition for Suicide Prevention, which is ramping up a campaign called "Out of the Darkness."
Educators at Needham High didn't want to stop there. To supplement the school's guidance staff, Riverside Community Care, a social services agency based in Dedham that works with dozens of area suburbs, was invited to help organize grief-counseling sessions with students, parents, and faculty.
About 50 Needham High students considered at-risk for depression receive weekly counseling services. A dozen more get Outward Bound-style leadership training paid for by a federal antiviolence program established after the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado.
Social workers also have met with educators and parents at Needham High, many of whom felt guilty and confused about the youths' deaths.
Jim McCauley, a Riverside social worker and outpatient program director, said the sweeping effort is off to a great start, but has a long way to go.
"We need to stay vigilant," said McCauley, who also serves on Needham's suicide prevention coalition. "We're aggressively looking for ways to continue this next year."
The coalition plans eventually to help not just teenagers, but also men in their 40s and senior citizens - the two groups considered highest at risk for suicide, he said.
Nine months into the effort, training programs have been established for adults who work with children, a public information campaign has begun, and youths are learning coping skills, according to a status report the coalition was due to present to the town this week.
The suicides in Needham and Wellesley do not represent an epidemic, as some fear, said Dr. Larry Berkowitz, director of Riverside Outpatient Care in Wakefield.
"One is too many, of course," he said. "Any time we hear about kids not being safe, it scares the heck out of us."
Across the country, about 30,000 people commit suicide annually; about 5,000 of them are teenagers, according to statistics from the office of the US Surgeon General, which also reports that there are an estimated 23 attempts for every death by suicide.
Suicide almost always is prompted by multiple factors, Berkowitz said. Mental illness, substance abuse, physical abuse, sexuality issues, and bullying can make youths vulnerable to depression. And a humiliating or traumatic event, like getting dumped by a girlfriend, expelled from school, or in trouble with the law, he said, can ignite a major mood change in an already vulnerable teenager.
"No one commits suicide because of a single stressor," Berkowitz said. "And this crosses all economic spectrums." Berkowitz said he'd like to see suicide prevention - now often relegated to health class - part of mainstream academic curriculums. If teachers and students felt comfortable being open about the topic, he said, even an English class discussion of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" could turn into a thoughtful discussion on the choices made by the doomed young lovers.
Marlborough High School last month brought in Riverside counselors after a girl fell from an interior balcony in an incident that school officials there have refused to detail publicly.
"Suicides and crises reverberate across town boundaries," McCauley said.
The Needham program has drawn inquiries from Hopkinton, Lexington, Medfield, and Upton officials.
Communities will have to examine their identities to find their own approach, said George Johnson, director of student development for Needham's schools.
"The hardest part is to do it thoughtfully rather than just do it," Johnson said. "There was a lot of anxiety in the community, and people wanted us to respond right away with programs responding to grief. We had to take a step back and look at how we could prevent future instances of suicide, and do the research on what would make a difference and what would fit in with Needham."
A chief goal of the campaign is to educate people about the signs and symptoms of depression. Awareness posters are "plastered everywhere" in school, Johnson said. "It's a little `in their face,' but we wanted to be in their face."
The posters and a new flier created by the coalition may be adopted on the state level, said coalition member Nick Simmons-Stern, a Needham High junior and delegate to the state Department of Education's student advisory committee. He said that while Needham students know more about suicide today than a year ago, they are still skittish. "I think the shock of losing people is still there. Some people are still scared to talk about it."
The idea of reaching out to Wellesley after last week's suicide, Simmons-Stern said, was inspired by a poster Hopkinton High sent over to Needham after two local teenagers died in a car crash last fall.
Scores of Needham students signed the card for Wellesley, happy to substitute their longtime sports rivalry with a kind gesture.
Simmons-Stern said: "We just wanted to pass along our thoughts to them."
Erica Noonan can be reached at enoonan@globe.com.
Out From the Shadow of Teen Suicide: Student opens up depression's toll
NEEDHAM - In his darkest moments, Michael Haas felt as if he were sinking in the ocean, a weight strapped to his feet. He cut himself with razor blades and at times thought he would rather die than show up for class at Needham High School.
It was fall 2005. Three Needham students had already committed suicide, and there would soon be a fourth. And as Haas, just 16, flirted with suicidal thoughts of his own, his parents, Chris and Ronnie Haas, were busy planning Michael's college education, not seeing signs of his deepening depression.
It is the classic parent-child disconnect, mental health specialists said yesterday at a State House forum about teenage depression.
Specialists say that depression often goes unnoticed by parents, which can lead to more serious problems, like the suicides in Needham or more recently Nantucket, where three teenagers - ages 15, 16, and 17 - have killed themselves in the last 11 months.
The problem with teenage depression, specialists said yesterday, is that many people do not want to or do not know how to talk about it and often retreat into silence for fear of what others might think or say.
But led by Michael, now 18 and a senior at the Cambridge School of Weston, the Haas family has taken a different approach since his diagnosis with depression almost two years ago. They have not only chosen to talk about Michael's struggles, but they appeared yesterday in a new educational documentary about teenage depression that debuted before nearly 300 people at the State House.
Haas, who plans to study photography next fall at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, said it was time for someone to speak up about an issue that, according to national estimates, affects more than 2 million American teenagers every year.
"I'm happy to do it, especially since no one else seemed to be doing it," he said in an interview last week, wearing cargo pants and work boots in the living room of his family's home in Needham.
"It can still be hard to talk about; it doesn't get easier," he said. "But I think it's too important. It's an opportunity that, if I didn't take, I'd probably never forgive myself."
The documentary, called "Depression: True Stories," will be distributed to every middle school and high school in Boston, courtesy of Partners HealthCare network, which includes Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. The idea, said the film's producer, Jeanne Blake, is to help teenagers see that they do not have to suffer alone and can get help.
Yesterday, Blake and others thanked the Haas family for coming forward.
"People respond to that human story, that individual story, that family story," said Barbara Leadholm, commissioner of the state Department of Mental Health. "That is something that touches us."
According to statistics, Michael Haas's story is common in Massachusetts. The most recent data from the state's biennial youth risk behavior survey, conducted in 2005, indicated that 27 percent of high school students felt sad or hopeless for more than two weeks, 13 percent seriously considered suicide, 12 percent made a plan to kill themselves, and 6 percent actually tried.
An adolescent commits suicide in Massachusetts roughly once every two weeks, according to state figures, and that has left some communities scrambling to respond to tragedies in recent years.
After a teen suicide in 2006, Arlington officials vowed to crack down on drug use, a factor in a death there.
In Wellesley, where five teenagers have killed themselves in the last three years, town officials have formed a committee to address the issue and plan to distribute resource guides to parents this year.
And in Needham, where students felt that officials initially tried to ignore the deaths, the town formed a suicide prevention coalition to raise awareness.
Tom Denton, the Needham coalition's cochairman, said school officials and students are better informed now about depression and suicide than they were before. In the last year, he said, more youths have come forward to report signs of depression in their friends.
But specialists say that conversations about depression do not come easily.
"It's extremely difficult for parents to acknowledge it, because there's a lot of pain with acknowledging it, and also it's a hard thing to identify," said Jon Mattleman, who directs the Needham Youth Commission. "As human beings, we want to minimize things: `Oh, it's just a stage he's going through. Oh, he'll feel better when basketball season is over.' But teen depression is very real."
Haas's bout with depression, he now believes, started in elementary school. But the real problems began in high school, with the low point coming in 2005, in the fall of his junior year.
Feeling pressure to please his parents, Haas no longer wanted to go to school. He withdrew from friends and family and refused to do homework. His parents - who also have a daughter, Rachel, 15 - missed the signs of depression, believing that their son was simply having academic problems.
"He was really in pain for a long period of time, and we wrote it off as: `That's Michael. That's his personality. He's a procrastinator,"' said his mother, Ronnie Haas, who works at MIT designing training programs for management. "We could see that things were hard. But we'd always look for a reason for it. We were quick to justify."
Finally, a school counselor picked up on Haas's desperation, called his parents, and Haas soon checked himself into a psychiatric hospital. He was diagnosed with depression and put on antidepressants. But his problems continued, his parents said, as they quickly pushed him back to school.
"There is a desire to stay with the group," said Haas's father, Chris, an operations manager at a manufacturing company. "To celebrate graduation on the day everybody celebrates graduation. Be talking about college when everybody is talking about college. There was momentum there."
But Michael needed to pull back. Still depressed, he began to intentionally injure himself, he said, slicing his hands and forearms with razor blades, not to commit suicide, but to distract himself from the pain inside his head, he said. More counseling and medical help followed.
The suicides did not add to his depression. "There wasn't much lower I could go," he said.
But the reaction of officials and students fed his frustration. He was upset, he said, about an unwillingness to talk about his classmates' deaths at the time. He ultimately left Needham High to enroll at the Cambridge School of Weston in fall 2006.
The antidepressants he was prescribed began to help, the family said. In time, Haas began to regain some control over his moods. With the help of regular therapy sessions and his medication, Haas is now feeling better.
He still grapples with depression from time to time, but his life is richer now than ever before, he said. He is looking forward to studying photography next year at MassArt, Haas said.
His favorite subjects to photograph, he said, are abandoned buildings and overlooked objects, things right before our eyes that some people simply do not see.
Keith O'Brien can be reached at kobrien@globe.com.
WHAT IS LEFT OUT?
Suicide has long been identified as a mental health concern, and associated with psychological factors and mental health disorders. Although there is varying information included in the articles from mental health workers, there is no expert medical analysis from a pediatric or psychiatric standpoint. There needs to be an in-depth analysis of the biological, psychological and social issues that surround this issue so that it can be more widely understood.
The three Boston Globe articles identify a specific issue related to youth suicide in Needham. However, the reader is left uneducated as to how the issue relates to other communities in Massachusetts, to Massachusetts in general and indeed to the United States of America. The recent suicides in Needham are not an isolated circumstance. Other questions that need to be raised include prevention, identification and treatment plans nationwide and worldwide. There needs to be an identification of a plan or method that is proving successful elsewhere, that communities such as Needham can look to for guidance and support. Of course, community initiatives, no matter how well intentioned, cannot survive without the funding, support and goodwill of the government. What financial and structural support are the Massachusetts and United States departments of health and education providing, and plan to provide in the future.
An example of an international intervention is the New Zealand Anti-suicide Yellow Ribbon Trust, which was established in 1998 by two parents whose children had committed suicide. Trained ambassadors within secondary schools wear a small badge on their shirts or blazers that enable them to be identified. They are able to give emotional support and advice about dealing with stress to schoolmates at any time of the day. “It’s ok to ask for help cards” can be presented at any time for assistance from an ambassador, or guidance counselor. The trust incorporated the “fight for life” as a fundraiser, in which well known celebrities took part in friendly sport competitions on national television to raise money and awareness for the campaign.
IDEOLOGY
Ideology can be defined as a system of beliefs, attitudes, values and ideas that characterize the thinking of a particular group. It is interesting to consider the ideology of teen suicide as it relates to three Boston Globe articles over the span of three years that relate exclusively to suicide in one particular community. Reporting on the subject, as well as the ideology surrounding the issue has shifted dramatically.
The initial article of 2006 exudes an attitude of self-questioning and self-blame in which guilt and confusion surround the idea that suicides should not happen. It is an analytical stance which characterizes certain members of society as failures.
A shift appears in an article almost twelve months later. Along with guilt and confusion there is now an overwhelming anxiety within the report which represents a belief that youth are at risk and in danger. Along with this is a belief that people and children should be scared to talk about such a contentious issue.
This year, in 2008 there is an undeniable emotion to the article, advocating suicide awareness. Acknowledgement and identification are the main ideas behind the words. As a society which will continue to grieve and manage such an issue, we can now only stand to benefit from this most current ideology.
Youth suicide can also be related to dominant ideologies in society. It is obvious that it is a social issue that directly and indirectly affects many members of society. It is now acknowledged as a problem and controversy that in the United States is related to moral values. Other social issues include abortion, gay rights, illegal immigration, stem cell research, and sex education. All of which are regarded as taboo, in which there is a strong prohibition against discussing such issues, as they are thought of as undesirable, and offensive by certain groups, communities, and other pockets of society.
Suicide if often ignored and unseen due to an ideology that reporting and discussion may have an unintended negative effect that suggests suicide as an option for teenagers. It is thought that talking about it, draws unwarranted attention, and brings it to the minds of adolescents in a way that normalizes it. This also leads to the apparent threat of copycat suicides in which a duplication of another suicide takes place that a person knows about due to local knowledge, or accounts and depictions in the media. There is a fear and ideology of social contagion in which suicide may spread throughout a school system or community.
Social issues are related to the fabric of a given community, and the underreporting, of suicides in the United States is largely due to cultural influences on themes such as religion, honor and the meaning of life. There is an inherent ideology in the religious nature of this country that suicide is seen as an offense and crime against god due to beliefs in the sanctity of life related to Judaism, Christianity and Catholicism. International views differ in countries with less of a religious foundation. In China, suicide is frequently tolerated if not explicitly approved. It is frequently used as a means of escaping tragedy and shame. Similarly, in Japan, it is a means of maintaining one’s honor, and an acceptable way to avoid shame or dishonor upon one’s family. Within The Netherlands, the decline of religion and rise of individualism has brought about a belief, that everybody has the right to live, as well as the right to die. The Dutch will usually respect the decision made by the deceased, even if they do not know, or do not understand the reasoning behind it.
A final ideology related to suicide that is somewhat non-dominant within today’s society, is that of ageism. Ageism is the stereotyping and prejudice against an individual or group because of their age. Related to this is Jeunism which refers to the preference of young people and adolescents over adults, and that greater vitality and youth is more appreciated than the supposed greater moral and intellectual facets of adulthood. In 2005 roughly eight-eight percent of all suicides in Massachusetts were people over the age of twenty four. Yet, there is no reporting of adult suicide in the media unless it is a celebrity, and much less concern and confusion. It seems that when youth commit suicide it is a much greater tragedy, and a real loss for society, as they are young, pristine, innocent, and only at the beginning of their lives.