This past week SA joined the rest of the world in marking Teen Suicide Prevention Week as part of raising awareness around this devastating global scourge. Around the world, young people or more specifically teenagers are resorting to taking their own lives because of a variety of reasons.
Most of these reasons, however, have mental health as an underlying cause. Teenagers globally are faced with many challenges ranging from toxic home settings where there’s constant violence to rapid technological developments and bullying, which negatively affect their mental health.
According to the World Health Organisation, suicide is a serious public health problem that requires involvement of all key stakeholders to deal with it. These stakeholders are the family as a basic unit, including extended families, schooling and the healthcare system that is able to identify and attend to mental health issues which are often at the heart of teenage suicide.
As a certified coach, working with young people among others, I always advise parents on things that they can do as part of preventing teenage suicide.
Firstly, communication between a parent and a child is key in the relationship between the two. This allows the child to share freely with their parents on issues affecting or worrying them. It also allows timeous taking of steps to prevent what could be disastrous where a child takes their own life. There are situations where the communication between teenagers and their parents is extremely difficult, but this is where the help of professionals like coaches is required.
Secondly, it is about understanding patterns. It is important that parents or other caregivers understand the daily routines and patterns of their teenage children. This includes what children do – including behaviour that is not consistent like a teenage child suddenly playing a certain kind of music, being withdrawn even during meal times, not wanting to join in family activities and poor personal hygiene practices.
In the age of social media, it is important that parents take an interest in their teenage children’s social media activities to know what the child is posting about including WhatsApp statuses. These can provide the parents with a window into their child’s state of mental health.
It is also important for parents to teach children to understand competition and the simple fact of life that life is not always about winning. Where we feel that our children have not performed to our expectations, it is important that as we express disappointment we do so in a constructive way where language or the how is key.
Parents sometimes drive children to be hyper-competitive where losing is not an option. This can have some devastating effects on the child, leading to serious mental health issues and ultimately suicide.
Lastly, what I said in one of my social media posting in marking Teen Suicide Prevention Week is that parents have to talk to their children about the subject of suicide as part of education. It is a heavy subject but it is important for parents to talk to children about it, what they know about it and how to prevent it.
• Hadebe is a certified coach and founder of Fidel Hadebe Coaching
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