Suicidal youth turn to community for relief

A young aboriginal man, bent on ending his life, conjured a dark, final vision. He would head out in his truck and roar headlong off a cliff. As he drove to the site, he realized that he hadn't said goodbye to his mother and father, so he turned the truck around. He pulled up to the family's home. His sister emerged, saw that he was upset and called to her mother.

The young man's mother came out, and with no questions asked, engulfed him with a hug. This, says suicide researcher Rod McCormick, was a critical moment that saved the man's life.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among Canadian youth ages 13 to 19 and the leading cause for those between 25 and 34.

Aboriginal youth, according to Health Canada, are five to six times more likely to die by suicide than their non-aboriginal peers.

While researchers around the world theorize about the learned and genetic traits that cause people to take their own lives, McCormick has consulted some real experts on suicide -- aboriginal youth who had tried to kill themselves, but survived.

Many of those he interviewed said they survived because they got help from others, were able to express their emotions and managed to gather up their self esteem. These themes are familiar themes among young people of various backgrounds who have battled suicidal impulses.
 
But among aboriginals, one other factor came up far more often than among other youth. "They made a spiritual connection," McCormick said.

McCormick concludes that suicide prevention programs for aboriginals should connect young people with their culture through ceremony, cultural events and time spent with elders and relatives.

"Communities that have taken active steps to preserve and rehabilitate their own cultures are shown to be those in which youth suicide rates are dramatically lower," the authors wrote in their 1998 report, which will be a chapter in a book, The Mental Health of Canadian Aboriginal Peoples: Transformations, Identity, and Community, soon to be published by University of British Columbia Press.