Our View

DON'T FOCUS ON MEDIA MESSENGER

In the wake of a second suicide involving a local youth being reported in
the local and Lower Mainland media, many are again asking the question of
why are newspapers writing about this, and television and radio stations
talking about it.

But the question that should be asked is why are we all so willing to close
ranks about a problem that is among the leading causes of premature death
of our young people? You can choose to shoot the messenger, in this case
the media, but it isn't going to cure the problem.

The dilemma for our society is that we cannot expect to adequately address
the problem of suicide, not if we allow its negative stigma as an excuse to
conveniently shelve it as only an issue that affects stereotyped troubled
teenagers. The reality is suicide can hit home with all age groups, all
income levels and all supposedly socially-adjusted levels of maturity.

Children today grow up in a generation where growing up has become as quick
as the restaurant fast foods we buy are prepared. We have come to place
tremendous responsibility on our youth as a means of evolving into
responsible citizens.

What we sometimes forget is how inundated our youth are with information
which they are not always mature enough to handle.

They are exposed to illicit drugs, violence, cigarettes, alcohol, pressures
of working part-time while going to school and earning good enough marks to
get into university at a far younger age than their predecessor
generations.It's one thing to be exposed to a wide array of information,
it's another to know how to digest it and respond to the stimulation in a
mature way before seeing your 16th birthday.

Many kids make that adjustment wonderfully, but many others do not. We need
to be able to reach out to those who see no other options but suicide
before them.

But if we don't talk about how we can do a more effective job of that as a
society, how will we be able to generate any better solutions?