One of the most perplexing issues facing mental health authorities today is teenage suicide and how to prevent it.
Alarming statistics published by The Centre for Adolescent Health reveal that suicide is a leading cause of death among young people, second only to motor vehicle accidents.
Research shows that over the four year period from 2012 to 2016, the average number of deaths from suicide per year was 2,795 (almost eight a day) and that teenage girls are more than twice as likely as boys to be in severe psychological distress even though the suicide rate is higher in males.
Teenagers who take their own lives leave behind many victims, but nowhere is the overwhelming sense of despair felt more intensely than by the parents of a son or daughter whose suicides leave them with questions for which they’ll never have answers.
On the 2nd August 2002, sixteen year old ANGELA McGREGOR took her own life and just one month later, her 20 year old brother STUART did the same.
Their mother ALANNAH McGREGOR told me that in the fifteen years since their suicides she had done a lot of soul searching and has learned that there is a vast difference between trauma and grief.
She also believes that funeral directors need to play a critically sensitive role in such circumstances.
