Reacting to student suicide

Something I learned over many years was to pause when my emotions were involved, particularly regarding the almost overwhelming urge to do SOMETHING, anything, to try to make myself and others feel better in tough times. After that "breath," I sometimes went ahead. Other times, I found myself looking for more options (beyond my initial thoughts).

The question we confront when a young person takes her own life is: "What does 'coverage' look like in the case of a young person tragically gone from our life?"

Of course the death of a student needs to be covered. She was part of the community. She lived a life, however brief. Some experts recommend a straight obituary that acknowledges the death using just the most basic facts. Some experts suggest going beyond the basic facts of the death, and emphasizing the life of the deceased.

Most experts do NOT recommend getting into cause of death in the case of suicides, for a variety of reasons. I don't know any professional papers, for instance, that mention suicide as a cause of death, particularly for young people.

I assume (and I wish I were wrong about this) that a significant percentage of young people at least contemplate suicide from time to time. If your staff agrees with that assumption, one approach with some validity is to take some time and really dig into suicide among youth as an issue. This might involve extensive interviewing of local medical and psychiatric experts, not to mention law enforcement and professional journalists. There are ethics questions here, and not just about how to cover a suicide. There are questions about the ethics of suicide itself. Perhaps we need to reach out to college campuses and to professors who have spent a lifetime thinking about ethics.

Running an in-depth investigation that gets into all sorts of angles concerning teen depression and more would certainly be appropriate. I just recommend the cushion of a month or two of time to make the reporting less a reaction to a specific event (after all, it's too late for our student) and more of a clearly conceived action to shine a light on an important issue. As I often would remind my own students: How will running x story HELP our readers?

Please know you are not alone in trying to find some way to make a difference in the area of youth suicide. It's a national problem. I recommend that all staffs read and view the excellent material produced last spring on suicide prevention by our friends at "The Call," from Kirkwood HS, in Missouri. Their adviser is Mitch Eden, the 2016 Dow Jones Journalism Teacher of the Year, and one of the nation's premiere educators.

I am sorry for the loss of any young person, and sorry for the family, which is deep in grief. In over 40 years of working in education, I find myself still puzzled about how to make high schools better, how to teach, and how to create communities. One thing I DO know is that students need SOMEONE to care for them, and sometimes family is not enough.

I saw a statistic claiming that nearly 40 percent of American high school students say there is no one who cares about them in their schools. If students feel that way, then no number of official programs or class lessons or pep assemblies can make the difference.

We need to love each other, particularly in the toughest times. If we, as journalists, begin from that position, we can bend the future in positive ways.