Suicide tackled

In some Northern Ontario communities suicide rates are five to seven times higher than the provincial average.

It’s reaching near epidemic proportions, says Angela Hill, the Thunder Bay Youth Suicide Prevention Task Force co-chairwoman, whose organization plans to target teachers and other educational professionals in the next phase of their fight against youth suicide.

The plan, buoyed by a $140,000 grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, is to give adults the tools to feel comfortable talking to students about a taboo subject that not dealt with properly can lead to tragic circumstances.

“Teachers sometimes don’t feel comfortable asking them those questions (about) how their mental health is, if they’re feeling depressed, if they’re feeling suicidal,” Hill said. “And then, if they get a positive response, and they’re worried about a student, (they need ) to know where in the community they can refer those students to.”

A media campaign, called Know What To Say, Know What To Do, directed at teachers and other educational workers, will start the blitz, followed by a number of community talks that will explore the best ways to ask questions.

The task force, which formed in 2007, got its start after two students killed themselves, drawing the severity of the problem into the public eye.

It’s an issue that just won’t go away by itself, Hill said.

“Youth suicide is the second leading cause of death of our young people,” she said. “And in Aboriginal communities, it’s five to seven times higher. As a matter of fact, in Northwestern Ontario, we think youth suicides for Aboriginal reserves have gone up 400 per cent.

“So we need to make sure we reach out to all our communities. A lot of First Nation students come to Thunder Bay to go to school from communities in the North that don’t have high schools. So these are vulnerable students coming into our communities and we need to reach out to teachers and the students and provide more support.”

It’s not only adults interested in tackling the issue head-on. A group of Grade 11 and 12 students at Westgate Collegiate and Vocational Institute have put together Cope, a documdrama which they’ll perform on May 25 and 26 at their school’s auditorium, that delves into the problems facing today’s teens and provides some of the answers to properly deal with them.

Riley Vainionpaa, a student at the school, said they drew on their own experiences in high school, together with anonymous input from troubled teens, to outline the struggles some students face every day.

“We wanted to have real, honest struggles that people have been through, because we haven’t been through the things that this play is portraying. So we wanted to make sure it was as realistic as possible,” she said.

There’s definitely a need for this type of interaction, she added.

“Even if you don’t see it overtly every day, when you talk to people often they’ll tell you they’ve had a really bad day and allude to the fact they’re going through something deeper. It’s not something that’s always right on the surface, but it’s still really there,” Vainionpaa said.

Other initiatives include the Circle of Wellness project, which targets children in Grades 3 through 7, positive youth development workshops for high school students to help build confidence and self-esteem.