Palo Alto Volunteers Act Boldly against Teen Suicides

Caroline Kent, 18, places a flower on a fence near a train crossing where four teens have died of suicide. (Michael Macor, San Francisco Chronicle)

By Franklin Cook, SPNAC Editor

Winston Churchill said, “It is better to do something than to do nothing while waiting to do everything”: With that in mind, I would like to salute a group of community members who are standing watch in Palo Alto, Calif.

Following the suicides of four students from a high school in Palo Alto in less than six months at the same train crossing, residents of the city have formed a volunteer group to patrol the crossing and prevent anyone form dying there.

There is no study showing that what they’re doing will prevent suicide (and I suspect there never will be such a study because this is an isolated incident and there are too many variables involved). For all we know, the added publicity they’re stirring up may be harmful in some way (but I doubt that could be substantiated by research, either).

And we certainly don’t know if they’re going to be successful at stopping this particular cluster of suicides that is tragically occurring at Henry Gunn High School.

Here is what we do know: Four children from the community these volunteers call home died by suicide one right after the other using the same means in the same place, and people said, “That’s not going to happen again here if there’s something I can do to stop it.” And then they did something to stop it.

According to a recent story on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” “Twice each hour, the same routine takes place at a busy railroad crossing that runs through a residential Palo Alto neighborhood.”

First the warning bell sounds, as the crossing gates lower to block access to the tracks. Twenty feet away, parents huddled along a chain-link fence freeze, midsentence, and look down the tracks toward the approaching headlights. They watch as the massive silver commuter train bears down and then hurtles through the crossing. And then, just like that, the train is gone. The gates go up again, faces relax, and the adults resume their quiet conversations.

“We’re out here to show the community and the kids that we care about them and that we want the misuse of the tracks to stop,” said Caroline Camhy. The mother of two small children, Camhy started the Track Watch days after the last suicide occurred at this spot a month ago. As school and city officials agonized and conferred, she and other volunteers felt compelled to act.

“We want the deaths to stop, and we want people to know that if they just open their hearts and look around them, they’ll find people who care,” said Camhy. She added, “We’re not the only ones.”

A few weeks ago in my post about blue lights at train stations as a preventative measure against suicide, I was critical of officials doing “something (whether or not it might be effective) because they had to do something,” and that might seem to contradict what I’m applauding in the case of the Track Watchers. But here’s the difference: We know that removing access to lethal means is generally a very effective intervention to keep people safe who are having thoughts of suicide, but we really know nothing about the effect of blue lights on people who are at imminent risk of killing themselves.

Even so, I worry about how Track Watch might be dramatizing the rash of suicides, about whether the volunteers are properly trained and if they are able to take action that is safe and effective should they encounter a determined suicidal person. There is much more that needs to happen than a group of volunteers standing guard at a railroad crossing.

But for a community to commit itself to stop suicide — to literally put themselves between suicidal people and danger — that boldness and determination deserves praise and support. And it suggests that such a commitment is a good starting place for a community to decide “to do everything” it can do to stop suicide, not just students’ deaths at one train crossing but suicide by people of all ages throughout the community now and in the future.

[Editor's note: The Los Angeles Times story linked to above describes another response to the Palo Alto deaths that bears mentioning, for it focuses on building resiliency by promoting a sense of hopefulness among students at the high school. For more information, please see the "Henry M. Gunn Gives Me Hope" blog.]

[The abridged URL for this post is http://tinyurl.com/PaloAltoSuicides .]

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Dylan Klebold’s Mom Is a Survivor of Suicide Loss

Dylan Klebold and his mother when he was five years old

By Franklin Cook, SPNAC Editor

The November issue of O, The Oprah Magazine features an essay by Susan Klebold about her journey of healing after her son’s involvement in the Columbine shootings, in which 13 people were murdered and which ended in her son, Dylan, and his partner, Eric Harris, killing themselves. Klebold’s essay is a study in understatement, which obscures the fact that the voice behind the writing is that of an extraordinarily courageous and insightful woman, and I fear that the most important things she writes about will be lost beneath the nightmarish reality of what happened at Columbine on April 20, 1999.

One of the contributions she makes in her essay — a contribution that I think merits careful attention — is highlighting a very common experience of survivors of suicide loss:

While I perceived myself to be a victim of the tragedy, I didn’t have the comfort of being perceived that way by most of the community. I was widely viewed as a perpetrator or at least an accomplice since I was the person who had raised a “monster.”

That sentence, with a few changes in wording, could have been written by countless suicide survivors whose loved ones have been seen by others as weak or misfits or tainted or crazy or “monstrous” in some other way, survivors who themselves have been treated as complicit or blameworthy in their loved ones’ deaths.

This notion — that each of us who grieves over a death by suicide is “a victim of a tragedy” — is central to my own view* of one of the complications of suicide grief; and the value of Klebold’s observations about that phenomenon stems from the horrific nature of the shootings (there were 37 victims, 13 murder fatalities and 24 people wounded in the shootings), which accentuated her treatment as a “perpetrator.” If she has healed as a survivor of suicide in the face of the truly awful and starkly wrong-minded judgments leveled against her — in the most public of forums, the American mainstream media — then her healing journey likely holds lessons for the rest of us.

My interest in Klebold’s story is also based on the two times that I’ve met her.

The first was in April 2005, at the Healing After Suicide Conference of the American Association of Suicidology, which was held in a Denver suburb that year. She and I were among the 25 or so people in attendance at a conference session that closed with time for the audience to ask questions or make comments (I did not know she was in the audience, nor would I have known her if I saw her). In the middle of the Q-and-A, she stood and introduced herself, “My name is Susan Klebold …”

I cannot recount precisely what she said, but I remember a few things very clearly: She said that she had not viewed herself as a suicide survivor for a long time after her son died by suicide because of the circumstances surrounding his death, and she expressed gratitude over discovering that point of view because of how healing it had been for her. She spoke for no more than a moment, and I don’t recall her specifically mentioning Dylan or Columbine or murder, so, in fact, I was not certain who she was or what circumstances she was talking about, except that her name sounded very familiar to me. I was struck by how poignant what she said was, as is often the case when I hear a survivor of suicide loss first share publicly about his or her experience–and it seemed to me that this was the first time she had shared her story publicly as a survivor (although I didn’t know that for a fact).

As she finished speaking and the Q-and-A continued, I turned to a colleague next to me and said, “Susan Kelbold?” And my colleague replied simply, “Dylan Klebold’s mother,” and instantly I knew why the things she had said had struck me as being so powerful.

At the close of the session, a handful of people, myself included, went up and, one-by-one, introduced ourselves briefly. I simply welcomed her and thanked her for being there and for sharing what she had shared. I walked away thinking, “What a courageous woman.”

After that quite ephemeral encounter with Klebold, I had no contact with her until this February, when I had an extraordinary talk with her. I was planning to travel to Denver to deliver a suicide survivor support group facilitator training, and the colleague with whom I would be delivering the training called to ask if I would like to go to dinner with her and Susan Klebold, who had been in contact with the organization that sponsored the training. Because the conversation the three of us had that winter evening was private, I will not share the details of it, but I believe it is appropriate to share a few things in general about the context of the meeting:

• The purpose of the meeting, from Klebold’s point of view, was to explore how she might be helpful to people who are at risk of suicide and people who have lost a loved one to suicide.
• My colleague and I thought she might be tremendously helpful and were very encouraging and affirming about her possible role as an advocate for suicide prevention and suicide grief support.
• None among the three of us had a specific idea about how it might be best to explore her being helpful to the field.

In addition, I will share some of the conclusions I made from the content of the meeting:

• Susan Klebold’s personal journey after the most unimaginably hellish experience of suicide loss possible is one of the most extraordinary and inspiring stories of healing that I have ever heard.
• She left me with a profound sense of her courage, her humility, her strength, her wisdom, and her sincere desire only to be helpful to others.
• She has great insight into the nature of suicidal behavior and the role that mental illness plays in suicide.
• She is a survivor of suicide loss like any other survivor of suicide loss.
• She is also a survivor of a particular type of loss, murder-suicide, that deserves more — and more-compassionate — attention not only from society as a whole but also from the community of suicide survivors and suicide prevention workers and advocates.

One of the reasons for this post today is to state that, now, I do have a specific idea about how she might be most helpful to survivors, to which I’ve alluded, above: She could communicate the story of how she healed. What did she do to rise above the judgments of others? How did she first affirm herself as a victim of a tragedy and then move from there to being the survivor a tragedy? I want to know from her the same thing I cherish knowing from any survivor of suicide: Not just the story of her loss and of where she wound up after her long and painful journey, but also what happened along the path she has traveled between April 20, 1999, and today: What specifically helped her to survive?

*[Editor's note: This recording, of a talk I gave in November 2008, has one statement in it that I would change -- or at least that I would further explain -- if I had been speaking from prepared remarks, which I wasn't. I said that survivors should consider themselves not responsible, in an absolute sense, for their loved one's suicide. I hope it's not confusing to say that, on the one hand, no survivor should take it upon himself to consider that the death is his fault, yet on the other hand, every survivor must struggle in his own way with his own judgments about the role he played in the other's life and death: That is a natural -- and often very complicated and even tormenting -- aspect of many survivors' journeys. FJC]

[The abridged URL for this post is http://tinyurl.com/Klebold-Mom .]

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Beliefnet Blogger’s Mission Is Healing Depression

Therese J. Borchard, founder of the blog “Beyond Blue” offers an explanation in Huffington Post for why she is on a personal mission to help people who have depression.

After trying 23 medication combinations, working with 7 psychiatrists, participating in two inpatient hospital psychiatric programs, and attempting every alternative therapy out there, I made a bargain with God.

“I will dedicate the rest of my life to helping people who suffer from mood disorders,” I promised, “if I ever wake up and want to be alive.”

Miraculously that day did come … the morning I woke up and thought about coffee.

So here I am. With my mission: to educate folks about mental illness and to offer support to those who, like myself, suffer from mood disorders.

Borchard is the survivor of her aunt’s suicide and a tireless crusader for better treatment and understanding for people with mood disorders and for the cause of suicide prevention. She has a book coming out in January, Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression & Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes, which she says was written

So that others might find a seed of hope in my story, and be able to hang on for one day longer. So that anyone who struggles with anxiety or depression–even in the slightest way–might find a companion in me, some consolation in the incredibly personal details of my story, and a bit of hope to lighten an often dark and lonely place.

It’s about my end of the bargain.

[Editor's note: I can't recommend the book without having read it, but over the past year I have read her blog and do recommend it, especially but not exclusively for people who are religious, which is the point of view from which she writes. FJC]

[The abridged URL for this post is http://tinyurl.com/HealingDepression .]

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