Starry-eyed Teens

When Josh Groban's haunting, semi-operatic voice is paired off with lyrics like "Starry, starry night, Paint your palette blue and grey, Look out on a summer's day, With eyes that know the darkness in my soul", it makes way for a song so beautiful that it's hypnotic. Then as the song goes on, one realizes that the song "Vincent (Starry, Starry Night)" is actually about the suicide. A rather heavy topic for a pop song, huh? But among the pop generation, suicide is a reality.

Recent months have shown an alarming rise in the number of adolescent and young adult suicides, their stories often exaggerated, circulating around the schools and universities where these young people once belonged to. Like the proverbial thief in the night, suicide shatters every family that it touches. When there's a suicide, everyone - friends, family, classmates and even strangers - is left grappling, looking for answers and trying to make sense of the tragedy. Even more so when it is a teenager who passes away. It's always a painful shock when someone dies and to find out that someone takes his or her own life is an even more tragic story. What wasted promise and potential! That person could've done so much.

In the United States, suicide is the second leading cause of death among children and adolescents. In the Philippines, according to Dr. Liza Espinosa-Rondain, a psychiatrist at the Makati Medical Center and Center for Family Ministries (Cefam) at the Ateneo de Manila University, statistics show that completed suicide more often than not takes place among 18- to 27-year-olds, and that 37 percent of suicide attempts are completed. In 2000, statistics show that 21 percent of Filipino youth know of at least one friend who tried suicide. In our own schools, the stores circulate - sometimes even exaggerated - of how many a youth have taken their own life.

Teens are easily influenced by peers, pop culture and the media. A lot of rock music even beholds death as fascinating and supernatural. I've also read that television, newspaper or radio coverage of suicide (or exposure to a recent suicide or suicide attempt in the community) can serve as a trigger for vulnerable adolescents to act on suicidal thoughts and plans. This is what is termed as "cluster suicides." Health institutions abroad, like the Centers for Disease Control, have come up with some guidelines for the media: Excessive or sensational reporting can lead to contagion. Reporting technical aspects of the suicide is not necessary. Suicide should not be presented as an effective coping strategy. It is never the final solution. Suicide should not be glorified. Don't glorify the death or prolong praises and tributes for the diseased. Teens might feel that they may not be appreciated now but then be appreciated after death. Even though they put on a feisty, independent mask on the surface, they're struggling with emotions all the time. Let's be mindful. Teenagers could get ideas, you know.

I didn't launch into a sermon on why it's wrong. Because we already know that it is terribly wrong and unjustifiable to commit suicide. But let me just emphasize age-old wisdom: Life is precious. Cherish it and make the most of it. Any hospital patient struggling for his life would tell you that in a heartbeat. Problems come and go and God is greater than any problem. While you are alive - whether young or young at heart - there is still so much to become, so much to do and so much to live for. Be brave.

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