Much of the problem, says James Mazza, a psychologist at the University of Washington, is rooted in schools' tendency to sidestep discussions of psychological illnesses, which affect up to 90 percent of suicidal teens. One was her brother. It was just a year after he died that Bartel tried to end her own life as well. It is these sorts of tragedies that depression screenings, already used in at least 30 schools, hope to prevent. Students can meet with a counselor, who might address romantic breakups and other transitions that can trigger suicidal thoughts.
Teenage depression can be hard to spot.
But even in the teen years, your child shouldn't seem like a different person. And, she says, broach the subject by telling kids depression affects one fifth of women and one tenth of men at some point and may run in families, as it did in Bartel's. But if you do, you don't need to live with it. Community awareness, says Jamison, may help prevent conversations like the one Jessica Bedard, now 24 and married with two children, had with her gymnastics coach. And that, he says, is both suicide's specter and its beacon of hope.