Sadly, this is very common in Tokyo. When I was there we were on a train platform waiting for a long time before I finally asked my Japanese friends what was going on. They said that someone had committed suicide. I had the same feelings as Anna. I imagined all the people waiting for the track to clear, the diverted routes and buses filling. Thousands of lives affected, even if it's a minor inconvenience to divert their route. I couldn't help but think of the ripple effect. It happens so often that as I looked around me, I realized how annoyed everyone was. It was hard to watch people being so callous, and yet I could almost understand it. I'll always remember that moment, feeling completely conflicted and thinking about things I never would have if that person didn't take their life in such a public way. #paloaltotrainsuicides
@sybilstryk: It's common enough in Japan that the family of the suicide victim will be charged for the clean-up and ancillary costs. They hope it will be a deterrent to other people who consider jumping in front of a train. #paloaltotrainsuicides
"Do the economics of Palo Alto, a high-income community that stands in stark separation to its lower-income, higher-crime neighbor East Palo Alto, contribute to this pressure?"
I don't think it does. Bridgend in Wales experienced the same teen suicide phenomenon, and it's as far from Palo Alto as you could imagine: [www.vanityfair.com]
And I grew up in a town where there was a teen suicide rash, in my sister's age range. It was terrifying, and even after the initial burst of suicides, it keeps echoing. It's a decade later, and her friends have died at a rate that's astounding compared to my friends from the same school. They also stick together a lot more than we did, and many of them found partners and got married in their early 20s while my friends are mostly single. I don't know what that might have to do with the suicide thing, but I know the suicides remain a central part of their lives.
This really hits home for me. Friday was the 10th anniversary of my biggest failed suicide attempt (I tried three times when I was 15). I was going to say that parents need to talk to their kids, but my parents did talk to me. In fact, my mom finally convinced me to go to therapy only about a week before I tried to overdose on medication provided by said therapist. So basically, I don't have any answers, but I really hope for the best for these kids. #paloaltotrainsuicides
I'm from Palo Alto. I graduated from Palo Alto High School 4 months ago. I spent four year of my life with the train tracks. I crossed over them everyday, several times a day. I was also there when the suicides occured. I saw the mourners, the flowers by the tracks.
My freshman year the kid who sat next to me in English class was found sitting on the tracks. He transferred schools afterwards.
This is MY TOWN. These are MY PEERS.
And there is something wrong in Palo Alto. There is something seriously wrong.
We are across the street from Stanford University. We are EXPECTED to attend Ivy Leagues and Cal and UCLA. Anything else is looked down upon. The adults in our town are wealthy, and successful. It's hard to put into words the feeling and pressures that being in PA puts upon you.
After every suicide there are town forums on teen stress and depression, but no one attends. Because we're too busy with our extracurricular. And our parents don't attend because they're too busy at their jobs, or because "their kid doesn't have problems".
Stress doesn't even BEGIN to be enough of a word to cover what these high schools do to people. I had three anxiety attacks my senior year alone, and I was incredibly lucky. I would have friends who would just start crying because of what they were expected to do, from their parents, their peers and themselves.
This is my incoherent ramble. Take it for what it is, interpret how you like. I don't know where this is meant to go, but I feel like I need to say something. It's so weird to see outsiders analyze what's been happening here, and in a way I really don't want you all to be. I see it as a "This is our problem, go away" type thing. But I'm not so sure I should be. #paloaltotrainsuicides
@amuzemi: I'm so sorry about this.
I went to school in Palo Alto briefly in the early eighties when I was little, and it was one of the happiest times of my life.
I went back six or seven years ago and found the atmosphere very peculiar. Even just walking around the streets.
There was a case in Wales of an "outbreak" of teen suicide. There was no more sinister reason than shitty job and life prospects, and the same spiralling knock-on grief as here. Yes, a certain percentage of teens in any population will commit suicide, but to just call it statistical overrules what you've just spelt out, that there's something bigger wrong. #paloaltotrainsuicides
@amuzemi: That's one thing my school did pretty well: threw on the brakes and basically grief-counseled the entire school, and set up lasting counseling options for anyone who needed it, including student grief counselors. It's a mess, of course -- kids who don't want to talk, kids who knew the suicide and clam up, kids who didn't know the suicide and are shocked to the core but feel like they shouldn't be allowed to be so shocked. And then each compounding suicide creates a panic. The kids who were in the centre of the social knot can get absolutely frantic, feeling like something's closing in on them. It was horrible hearing my sister go through that, and she's a very strong personality.
I do think schools need to spring into action when the trouble starts, though. Any sort of extracurricular/optional offerings just won't do the trick. #paloaltotrainsuicides
I am glad that the community is actually reporting this. As others have mentioned, death by train and bridge seems pretty common - but no media outlet in the metro area where I live ever reports on it. Just stuff like - bridge closed for 6 hours, train down for an "accident". It has always pissed me off because it is information that should be available for analysis by everybody. Like, why do so many ___ kill themselves publicly? What trends are being expressed? Do more people die publicly when the economy is heinous? I think we should know and discuss these things, at least so that anyone who persists in thinking the world is a place where things just tend to work themselves out knows that others can feel violently differently.
As the daughter of a suicide, I feel compelled to reinforce the knowledge that suicide is contagious and profoundly life-altering to every survivor. Anyone and everyone who knows the victim will ask themselves what they could have done differently - once or repeatedly for their whole lifetime.
I read some statistic when it happened (I suffer from my own clinical depression issues) and there is something like a 60% increase in likelihood of committing suicide if someone close to you has done so. (I'm not really sure about the whole correlation/causation thing there). I can testify that even though my dad and I had been estranged for 5 years I have spent the five since it happened intellectually satisfied that I had to nothing to feel guilty about - emotionally, I had no idea what was going on and have actually been in deep denial about my feelings.
It's not just the death of someone you feel you could have prevented - it's that everyone else feels the same way. 350 people attended my dad's funeral and they ALL felt guilty and shocked and so sorry that they couldn't help when it would have mattered. 250 people (at least) for the rest of their lives will have a nagging feeling that saps their vitality, confidence and sense of self-worth.
I don't know what can be done. When I was close to ending it I literally could not conceive anyone in the world would be sad if I were dead. I honestly thought they'd be relieved. It does wax and wane, though. I never would have believed it the first time - and paradoxically, the more major episodes you have the more likely you are to keep surviving.
@Hiroine Protagonist: I think you offer amazing insight, stuff I've never even thought about.
As far as your first point, last week, my city had two suicide attempts on very public overpasses, which closed main highways for hours. The cause of the road closures was reported in each case, and I think the media did the right thing by refusing to euphemize the events. Still, I can't help wondering if the significant publicity surrounding the first attempt was at least a factor in the second, which, sadly, was "successful". #paloaltotrainsuicides
@Hiroine Protagonist: Thank you for writing that. You articulated something I've never been able to put into words. That persistent anxiety and guilt that eats away at you after the suicide of someone close to you is a communal thing. I remember sitting in my parent's living room and looking around and knowing that my family had changed and that we were all experiencing the same terrible guilt. #paloaltotrainsuicides
@Hiroine Protagonist: The reason that so many newspapers don't report the events as suicides is because reporting them as such tends to inspire copycats. I believe the Golden Gate Bridge managed to slash the number of suicides-by-jumping just by convincing the media to stop reporting on them. Obviously reading an article can't inspire someone who's mentally healthy to attempt suicide, but reading articles (especially about highly publicized suicides) tend to fuel the "they'll be sorry when I'm gone" thoughts of those who are already considering suicide, and sometimes they're pushed to act impulsively just on the basis of these articles. #paloaltotrainsuicides
Just in regarding to media reporting, there was a case in Australia recently, with four suicides in six months at one school. Sixty Minutes here did a story on it, but Beyond Blue, an organisation that works to address depression, won an injunction to stop them ever airing it. Their argument is that any coverage could lead to more deaths.
The Australian Press Council guidelines recommend not reporting suicide at all.
The Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice says that tv reporting on suicide "should exclude any detailed description of the method used. The report must be straightforward and must not include graphic details or images."
And from a Stave Gov health website: "Research shows that reporting of method is directly linked to copycat suicides."
@nora charles: I know that's the given rationale and I recognize that it has some validity, but it concerns me that this should be a no-go area for public analysis. I think it would behoove us all to look at why so many people chose to do this hideous thing in public. But you/the rationale may be right. #paloaltotrainsuicides
@Hiroine Protagonist: I went to Cornell, a school that is often talked about for having ridiculous suicide rates. When I got there, I heard from from some locals that the suicides were actually often locals.
In four years, though, I didn't hear of one suicide. I did hear one account of someone falling into the gorge. I do think they tried to cover them up because once I drove over the bridge right as police cars pulled up and a police man ran to look over the edge. My roommate said they were still there 45 minutes later. But we never heard anything about it. #paloaltotrainsuicides
The Werther Effect is pretty well accepted in suicide studies circles - the idea that suicidal behavior as reported by the media (or by knowing someone who has done so) can lead to clustering in a community. That's why many cities have a policy not to report suicides on subway lines. It's named after "The Sorrows of Young Werther" by Goethe, whose glamorous portrayal of suicide caused a bunch of copycat suicides in Germany.
There's some evidence though that by demystifying, de-romantasizing and de-otherizing suicide, people may be more likely to get help. There's some really interesting work done about Kurt Cobain's suicide - because Courtney Love spoke in a way that showed her sadness and anger (painting him as mentally ill and the act as "cowardly"), the expected increase in rates wasn't seen. It's not about victim blaming, but shifting suicide from an individual decision made by people with nothing going for them to a major public health concern. #paloaltotrainsuicides
I was reading something recently about a small town in my state with four teenage suicides in a relatively short period of time. I can see how, for teenagers in particular, it can become an epidemic. At a young age, the mind is often unable to truly appreciate cause and effect, and when a peer dies in a deliberate, public way, which gets a lot of community attention and which is presumably followed by a funeral where people stand and say very nice things about the person, you can see how a teen who feels invisible might see that as an attractive option.
In any case, it is incredibly sad for all involved -- the victims, the friends and family, and the bystanders. #paloaltotrainsuicides
Has anyone seen the footage of the baby carriage rolling off the platform and onto the tracks? When you think of the destructive force a train can truly be, it's a miracle that child survived.
I can't imagine what these kids' families, friends, the community, the transit employees, and the commuters must be going through. Imagine being the driver of one of these trains. . . #paloaltotrainsuicides
@hfree: God I feel for that woman. I didn't want to watch it but then it happened to pop up on TV before I was watching something. She must be scarred for life!! #paloaltotrainsuicides
@hfree: I'd rather not watch the clip, but I assume the train didn't come while the stroller was on the tracks? Or did it not actually fall onto the tracks? #paloaltotrainsuicides
@Penny: The mother was on the Today show this morning. Obviously still shaken but relieved that her son was alright.
@BuffySummers: The train was pulling into the station when the stroller rolled off the platform and onto the tracks. It was on the tracks rather than the rails, so the stroller was more or less safely under the train. #paloaltotrainsuicides
@BuffySummers: It's horrifying ~ the stroller gets away from the mom, who lunges for the stroller and actually tries to stop the train with her HANDS. The train runs over the stroller, which ends up pinned under the train, I believe about 60 feet down the tracks. The baby is found, basically unscathed, in the mangled wreckage of the stroller. #paloaltotrainsuicides
@BuffySummers: Oh the train hit the child, but by some miracle it passed over the carriage mostly.The baby was strapped in so didn't fall onto the tracks, he was very fortunate and only suffered a head injury that wasn't too serious. #paloaltotrainsuicides
@LucyPevensie: Oh my god. I feel sick. Can't even imagine what that mother went through in those few seconds (or minutes?) I suppose it probably took awhile to find the baby. #paloaltotrainsuicides
This just makes me so sad. Whenever I read or hear about teen suicide I just want to yell at them: "don't you know how much better it's going to get in a few years?"
There was a suicide at my brother's high school last year, and the administration was very proactive about working to avoid any copycats. It's a tricky business (compounded by the fact that it's a religious school): there's a need to reach out to those students for whom depression and suicidal ideation are already a part of their conceptual reality, but to do so without glamorizing the act as a sort of ultimate, heroic, final "fuck you". Adolescents can be notoriously indifferent to the difference between good and bad attention, and you'd have to be really dense not to notice that, if attention from adults was what this kid wanted, he got it in spades, albeit posthumously.
This is why I think a proactive approach (before any suicides) is so important: in a perfect world, suicide would become like eating paste, something that just isn't done, not because the paste isn't there, but because it's a damaging thing to do that doesn't benefit anyone.
With apologies in advance for the long comment...
I live in Menlo Park, which is the next town over from Palo Alto, and I can attest that the CalTrain tracks run right through neighborhoods and business districts, and most of the crossings are level rather than grade separated ~ meaning that all a person has to do to get in front of an oncoming train is to duck under a little pedestrian gate. I've lived here for 15 years, and in that time I've crossed those tracks mutiple times every day, to get from our neighborhood to downtown Menlo Park & Palo Alto. I always cross with a touch of trepidation, even in my car and certainly when my kids & I are on bikes. So many people have been killed on the tracks during my time here that I have an abundance of respect for the trains, and I shudder a little when the non-locals come screaming through at top speed. In a contest between person and train, train *always* wins.
I knew a couple of people who killed themselves in high school, one a year to the day after finding his mom dead of a suicide in the family swimming pool, the other because his girlfriend had broken up with him. The first guy obviously had huge emotional trauma from his mother's death and might have killed himself no matter what, but the second, I think, would have gotten over the breakup and gone on to live a normal life, had he not succeeded in killing himself at 17.
I do believe that the idea of suicide waxes and wanes in young adults quite commonly, and access to quick and lethal methods of killing oneself, like CalTrain and the Golden Gate Bridge, make it all too easy for someone to act upon what might otherwise be a fleeting notion. CalTrain has to figure out a way to make these tracks less accessible. As for the pressure cooker these kids live in ~ it's real, it's acute and I don't know what the answer is. It makes me very scared for my 6 and 8-year old kids, and I just hope that I'm able to instill in them the belief that they can follow their own path, and it doesn't have to lead to an Ivy. It's crazy competitive around here, and so hard for kids to opt out of that mentality, but right now I think people are getting a hard look at the what you reap when you sow that type of hyper competitive culture.
@LucyPevensie: I work in Palo Alto and I know exactly what you mean. The kids are driven to succeed, the shadow of Stanford and its hyper-successful students dimming the light here.
But I think there is an additional problem: there is a high ratio of engineers in the population here, and a correspondingly high level of kids on the autism spectrum, especially with Asperger's Syndrome. Having AS can make it that much harder for a student to deal with the additional pressures. #paloaltotrainsuicides
@Dances with Peeps: It can also make it more difficult to see alternatives. The autism spectrum as a whole is often (and well) described as a triad of impairments--we have issues with imagination, communication, and social skills. Imagination is often misunderstood to mean an ability to create art or stories of fiction (or enjoy either) or play with toys in save in a rote manner, and it certainly can manifest that way. But, especially in the AS end of the spectrum, it may show up as an inability to plan ahead well or see other alternatives.
This is my own personal struggle with this impairment due to my AS. I often, especially when I'm in a dysthemic state or upset, can't see alternatives to the situation that I am in, or can see only one way out when there are really quite a few. This is often fatalistic thinking ("I failed this test so now I will fail the class and never graduate," when the test is really a small portion of the overall grade and all other classes are going well, for example.), and most people experience it sometimes--but it is a much harder thing to break for many of us with AS.
I've never been more than passively suicidal, but I do get really fatalistic when I'm feeling depressed (and I've been in a down swing for over a year). I can very easily see how a kid on the spectrum might decide that suicide is the only solution to his problems, and remain convinced until he follows through.
(A recent study, though, showed that parents who are eningeers don't have significantly different rates of autistic kids than non-eningeers, but the more general traits may be more common in this group.) #paloaltotrainsuicides
My hometown went through a suicide cluster 20 years ago. They all used guns. It was just horrible. After the third one (they were all space a few weeks apart) everyone was constantly on edge, wondering who would be the next to do it.
As for the pressure theories discussed above - I know everyone wants to think there's an identifiable cause for suicide, but it's usually more complex than that. I had everything going for me, with incredible advantages, when I was suicidal. Later in life, when I fell on some very hard times, it wasn't even a possibility. Suicide is its own unique demon and has little to do with logic. #paloaltotrainsuicides
@Pantra: Thank you. Also, as I mentioned below, when you have "everything" and you still feel like you're caught in the fog, the guilt can be consuming. This was something I struggled with, and continue to struggle with, so much. I have two loving parents, I was never abused, nothing terribly tragic has happened to me, I am attractive enough, I'm smart, I have full use of all my limbs, but I still seriously considered offing myself. That shit has nothing to do with having everything, having enough, having what someone else does not. It's bullshit to claim otherwise. #paloaltotrainsuicides
@Penny: Exactly. It's comforting for other people to think there's a logical reason, but what's so terrifying about being caught in the grip of it is there doesn't have to be a reason. And it's still there. #paloaltotrainsuicides
"Do the economics of Palo Alto, a high-income community that stands in stark separation to its lower-income, higher-crime neighbor East Palo Alto, contribute to this pressure?"
I'm not sure how this would affect the teenagers in PA, as someone who grew up in East Palo Alto, an incredibly rough town surround by affluent neighborhoods, it was always difficult to know that we weren't afforded most of opportunities as a lot of the kids there. I mean we aren't even allowed to go to high schools in that school district which are all of 5 minutes away, instead we are bussed out to schools almost 20 miles away. I know this is off on a tangent, and am not trying to make it an us vs them issue, I'm just trying to understand how EPA is relevant to this situation. #paloaltotrainsuicides
@calkid: I would agree with this. My first boyfriend grew up in Piedmont, another affluent bay area community essentially encircled by Oakland. Not particularly bad parts of Oakland, but it was always so fucking weird being there. There were NO black people there. And very few POC. They have their own police and fire departments and it's so, so sheltered. But, I never really felt like they were impacted by the sheltering. 90% of them were total assholes, though. #paloaltotrainsuicides
The biggest problem with suicide is that no one talks about it. I work with a suicide hotline and schools actually REFUSE to let us come in and talk to students proactively. They would rather we do it after someone has killed themselves.
I think it is important to remember that the actual window of time that a depressed person will actually go through with the act is very small. If you can interrupt it, you have a chance at saving that person, they have a chance at saving themselves. Everything passes. #paloaltotrainsuicides
@Vivelafat says Sweep the leg, Johnny.: Wow, really? That is really sad to hear that schools will refuse to provide their students with such valuable information and support.
I wish more people would openly talk about suicide. I am guilty of being silent about it because, truthfully, it scares me deeply. But I know firsthand the pain that being silent about suicide can bring. It is not something to be skirted around, hidden away or ignored. My partner's father killed himself when my partner was only five years old. He never knew it was a suicide until two decades later. He grew up knowing that something was wrong about the story he had always been told about his father's death but never knowing exactly what that was. He was a small child when it happened and he was unable to process the experience, even though he was aware on some level about what had happened. By keeping that skeleton in the closet, his family denied him the ability to process it, even when he himself started to exhibit the same symptoms of depression that his father had had, until far too many years after the fact, after he had already suffered under the weight of a childhood trauma he couldn't have articulated if he tried. When he himself began to feel suicidal when his depression got out of control, it was talking about it openly, admitting to himself and someone that he loved that he wanted to die, that ended up saving his life. And to this day, I am infinitely grateful that he did open up and he was able to talk about it and break that cycle.
If you can talk about it openly, you can save someone's life potentially. It is terrifying to look that spectre in the face, though. #paloaltotrainsuicides
As a former CalTrain rider, I feel so sorry for the conductors and engineers when this happens. CalTrain has really tried to fence off the tracks, post suicide prevention signs everywhere. But there's only so much they can do, they could make it a self-enclosed tube for 90 miles and someone could figure out a way to get on the tracks. Or they could go jump on 101 from the University Ave. overpass, or take a handful of drugs.
With regard to the kids, I think Palo Alto definitely is filled with affluent families that push their kids, and define failure as not getting in to an Ivy League school. Both Gunn and Paly are pretty competitive environments, and I could imagine the pressure cooker gets to kids. In that sort of environment, to acknowledge depression or fear about one's future, could be seen as a sign of failure. #paloaltotrainsuicides
"Do kids at Gunn — a major feeder for Stanford University — feel insurmountable pressure to achieve? Do the economics of Palo Alto, a high-income community that stands in stark separation to its lower-income, higher-crime neighbor East Palo Alto, contribute to this pressure? Might kids in both places do better if this economic segregation could be lessened?"
See, this is what I don't get. Why commit suicide if you have everything going for you. Gunn and Paly are two schools with vast resources (which I would expect since Palo Alto is like 76% white), great campuses, very respectable teachers, etc. While the pressure can be very hard you know you'll be rewarded later on for your hard work and sacrifices. And I take issue with some of this. Don't you think it's just as hard growing up in places that are the opposite of Palo Alto (you know, poor) that would cause someone to commit suicide? Pressure is everywhere. Some people can handle it very well in the most adverse of places while others who live in relative luxury cannot. That's just how life is. #paloaltotrainsuicides
@Evie Havok: If you have everything, and you still feel like nothing, where is there to go? If you have something to fight against--racism, poverty, no resources--then the fight is outside you at least to some extent, and you can engage with it.
Just wanted to provide another possible angle on this incredibly sad story. #paloaltotrainsuicides
@Evie Havok: As somebody who attended a school that sounds very much like Gunn, I can understand how people with everything going for them would be crushed under the pressure to succeed. Just because you work your ass off with promises of success in the future you can still hate every waking moment of your life, and the system that you've basically been forced to subscribe and devote all your energy to. #paloaltotrainsuicides
@Evie Havok: Having advantages does not make a person happy. The pressure to succeed at that age and in that kind of environment is astronomical. I went to a prep school in the Midwest and the pressure was unstoppable. Two years in a row the previous year's Valedictorian committed suicide during their freshman year of college...both Ivy League schools. #paloaltotrainsuicides
@Evie Havok: I didn't grow up in the US but I went to an elite college there, and as a tutor I saw an extraordinary number of students for whom there could be absolutely no room for even minor failure. The pressure they had been under in high school really astonished me, especially since it seemed like my education had been far more academically rigorous--frankly, I knew a shitload more--and yet I had been a much bigger slacker with no extra-curriculars, no overscheduling, no sports, and no expectation of across-the-board perfection. I had students tell me that they were 'grade Nazis', and sob on my shoulder after getting a B+. I can sure as hell see how students in that kind of environment might feel themselves driven to suicide. I don't see at all what wealth has to do with it; the pressures are different, not necessarily less severe, especially in the slightly warped imagination of a teenager. The students I met from that milieu were expected to be, for all intents and purposes, completely perfect--and they expected no less of themselves. Self-criticism has been a powerful element of my periods of depression, and I grew up in a culture in which I was expected to take a few Cs if only to knock me down a few pegs and because no one is supposed to be perfect. I can't imagine how it must feel for students who also tend toward self-criticism in that pressure cooker situation. #paloaltotrainsuicides
@Evie Havok: I don't think suicide is about what you do or don't have. Your statement is really lacking in empathy. If you are depressed enough to have suicidal ideations, whatever privileges you have are sort of besides the point. #paloaltotrainsuicides
@Evie Havok: as someone who went to a competitive private school that had a higher than average rate of suicide while i was there (5 in 10 years spread out in ages 13-18), i feel comfortable saying that your opportunities in life do not correlate to mental well being.
as someone whose community was consistently affected by suicide and death in my 13 years at my school, statements like yours are upsetting to hear because in many ways it misses the point in so many ways. #paloaltotrainsuicides
@Evie Havok: Why commit suicide if you have everything going for you ... While the pressure can be very hard you know you'll be rewarded later on for your hard work and sacrifices.
Because at that age, in that moment, you don't. You're defined by your grades, your achievements, your capacity to perform for others and to live up to others' standards. That kind of pressure-cooker environment involves a lot of self-negation. Ignore your body's needs for sleep so that you can cram more activities into your schedule and still get seven college-level classes' worth of homework done. Stop [X]ing and work; you can [X] later when you've gotten into the right college/finished your degree/landed a respectable job. And sometimes, even when you perform as expected and get the right grades, an acceptance to the right school, the right degree for the right job, etc., you get out of school and there's a busted economy that can't or won't hire you, or a city that's priced you out, or perhaps a general disillusionment that all of your hard work and sacrifices haven't actually earned you anything that you were promised they would. #paloaltotrainsuicides
@Evie Havok: Are you serious? It does not matter if you have everything going for you, when you have a feeling of complete hopelessness and dread every day.
I have been depressed for a couple of years now and I have everything going for me. I go to an Ivy league, have great friends, great parents and nothing tragic ever happened to me. But, I dread getting up every morning and cannot phantom of it ever getting better.
I am sure these kids felt hopeless and just couldn't breathe anymore. When I was so depressed that I cried all day and did not leave the house, the only thing that prevented me from committing suicide was guilt of how my parents would deal with it.
I am currently in therapy and taking antidepressants. I hope it gets better, but the feeling of hopelessness is very strong.
So I completely understand having everything going for you, and still being completely depressed.
Saying why commit suicide if you have everything going for you is a statement that will make a person less likely seek help because they think that nobody will understand. They will feel judge and pathetic for feeling this sad, even though they have everything going for them. #paloaltotrainsuicides
Those things happen to white,children in schools with vast resources, too. And they can be underreported, too. And a child who is having these issues, but is still expected to perform in the top 10% to get to Stanford without the help and support he or she needs, certainly could sink into a deep enough depression to commit suicide. It's not about the weak rich people and the plucky poor people - this isn't some French propaganda from 1790. Although, let me say, it did end in those rich folks being killed. It's a dangerous path to go down, pretending that people who suffer depression, but who are rich, are somehow weaker than a person who suffers depression but has a lower income. There are some other factors, of course, but basically: assuming that because a person has an upper-middle or middle-upper income they live an easy life is just inaccurate. #paloaltotrainsuicides
@Dancingfrog: *eyeroll* Yes, I realized all those things can happen to them, too. Also, I pointed out that PA has an affluent white majority to explain why they have all those resources at their disposal. Not for any other reason. And, anyway, I would think that because they have all of these resources/affluence at their disposal they wouldn't get help for the kids/teens in their community (probably because they're deluding themselves into thinking their kids aren't like that, I know). I didn't ask my question to be obtuse. Having gone to a prep school and having had those same pressures to succeed I know what it's like. I just wanted to know how the switch came about. How I managed to get out of that hopelessness and depression (with all the self destructive behaviors: cutting, suicidal ideation, etc.) and they didn't. And, yes, I know that with suicide one will never know the true cause of why it happened. But it would be nice if we could pinpoint it down to influences coming from culture/environment/family and perhaps genetics. I didn't have anyone to help me which I imagine these kids didn't either. The reason my comment is lacking in empathy is because I've never had anyone close (close being defined as a very close friend/family member) to me commit/attempt to commit suicide. I meant no offense (at least this time).
@Evie Havok: I don't think you understand the concept of empathy. It involves understanding the feelings of others, even though YOU haven't experienced them. I've never had a loved one commit suicide either; it's not a prerequisite for empathy in this situation. Your eyerolling is really unnecessary; your comment obviously upset a number of people, who responded to you respectfully. You may not have meant offense, but what you said was offensive. #paloaltotrainsuicides
@thesciencegirl: I'm not very big on empathy/sympathy if you haven't noticed from some of my comments on here. I try to be and in that process of trying to understand people I might or might not say something offensive. *shrug* The eyeroll was just a defense because the response was attacky. Of course I know what all those things are that dancingfrog mentioned (who wouldn't?). I know they can happen to anyone. But, whatever, that's besides the point. #paloaltotrainsuicides
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I don't think it does. Bridgend in Wales experienced the same teen suicide phenomenon, and it's as far from Palo Alto as you could imagine: [www.vanityfair.com]
And I grew up in a town where there was a teen suicide rash, in my sister's age range. It was terrifying, and even after the initial burst of suicides, it keeps echoing. It's a decade later, and her friends have died at a rate that's astounding compared to my friends from the same school. They also stick together a lot more than we did, and many of them found partners and got married in their early 20s while my friends are mostly single. I don't know what that might have to do with the suicide thing, but I know the suicides remain a central part of their lives.
11/02/09
11/02/09
My freshman year the kid who sat next to me in English class was found sitting on the tracks. He transferred schools afterwards.
This is MY TOWN. These are MY PEERS.
And there is something wrong in Palo Alto. There is something seriously wrong.
We are across the street from Stanford University. We are EXPECTED to attend Ivy Leagues and Cal and UCLA. Anything else is looked down upon. The adults in our town are wealthy, and successful. It's hard to put into words the feeling and pressures that being in PA puts upon you.
After every suicide there are town forums on teen stress and depression, but no one attends. Because we're too busy with our extracurricular. And our parents don't attend because they're too busy at their jobs, or because "their kid doesn't have problems".
Stress doesn't even BEGIN to be enough of a word to cover what these high schools do to people. I had three anxiety attacks my senior year alone, and I was incredibly lucky. I would have friends who would just start crying because of what they were expected to do, from their parents, their peers and themselves.
This is my incoherent ramble. Take it for what it is, interpret how you like. I don't know where this is meant to go, but I feel like I need to say something. It's so weird to see outsiders analyze what's been happening here, and in a way I really don't want you all to be. I see it as a "This is our problem, go away" type thing. But I'm not so sure I should be. #paloaltotrainsuicides
11/02/09
I went to school in Palo Alto briefly in the early eighties when I was little, and it was one of the happiest times of my life.
I went back six or seven years ago and found the atmosphere very peculiar. Even just walking around the streets.
There was a case in Wales of an "outbreak" of teen suicide. There was no more sinister reason than shitty job and life prospects, and the same spiralling knock-on grief as here. Yes, a certain percentage of teens in any population will commit suicide, but to just call it statistical overrules what you've just spelt out, that there's something bigger wrong. #paloaltotrainsuicides
11/02/09
I do think schools need to spring into action when the trouble starts, though. Any sort of extracurricular/optional offerings just won't do the trick. #paloaltotrainsuicides
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11/02/09
As the daughter of a suicide, I feel compelled to reinforce the knowledge that suicide is contagious and profoundly life-altering to every survivor. Anyone and everyone who knows the victim will ask themselves what they could have done differently - once or repeatedly for their whole lifetime.
I read some statistic when it happened (I suffer from my own clinical depression issues) and there is something like a 60% increase in likelihood of committing suicide if someone close to you has done so. (I'm not really sure about the whole correlation/causation thing there). I can testify that even though my dad and I had been estranged for 5 years I have spent the five since it happened intellectually satisfied that I had to nothing to feel guilty about - emotionally, I had no idea what was going on and have actually been in deep denial about my feelings.
It's not just the death of someone you feel you could have prevented - it's that everyone else feels the same way. 350 people attended my dad's funeral and they ALL felt guilty and shocked and so sorry that they couldn't help when it would have mattered. 250 people (at least) for the rest of their lives will have a nagging feeling that saps their vitality, confidence and sense of self-worth.
I don't know what can be done. When I was close to ending it I literally could not conceive anyone in the world would be sad if I were dead. I honestly thought they'd be relieved. It does wax and wane, though. I never would have believed it the first time - and paradoxically, the more major episodes you have the more likely you are to keep surviving.
Anyway - sorry for the novel. #paloaltotrainsuicides
11/02/09
As far as your first point, last week, my city had two suicide attempts on very public overpasses, which closed main highways for hours. The cause of the road closures was reported in each case, and I think the media did the right thing by refusing to euphemize the events. Still, I can't help wondering if the significant publicity surrounding the first attempt was at least a factor in the second, which, sadly, was "successful". #paloaltotrainsuicides
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Just in regarding to media reporting, there was a case in Australia recently, with four suicides in six months at one school. Sixty Minutes here did a story on it, but Beyond Blue, an organisation that works to address depression, won an injunction to stop them ever airing it. Their argument is that any coverage could lead to more deaths.
The Australian Press Council guidelines recommend not reporting suicide at all.
The Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice says that tv reporting on suicide "should exclude any detailed description of the method used. The report must be straightforward and must not include graphic details or images."
And from a Stave Gov health website: "Research shows that reporting of method is directly linked to copycat suicides."
(This info comes from the below two stories.)
[www.abc.net.au]
[www.abc.net.au]
The second story linked above is a transcript from Media Watch, a show that discusses media issues - it's very interestng. #paloaltotrainsuicides
11/02/09
11/04/09
In four years, though, I didn't hear of one suicide. I did hear one account of someone falling into the gorge. I do think they tried to cover them up because once I drove over the bridge right as police cars pulled up and a police man ran to look over the edge. My roommate said they were still there 45 minutes later. But we never heard anything about it. #paloaltotrainsuicides
11/02/09
There's some evidence though that by demystifying, de-romantasizing and de-otherizing suicide, people may be more likely to get help. There's some really interesting work done about Kurt Cobain's suicide - because Courtney Love spoke in a way that showed her sadness and anger (painting him as mentally ill and the act as "cowardly"), the expected increase in rates wasn't seen. It's not about victim blaming, but shifting suicide from an individual decision made by people with nothing going for them to a major public health concern. #paloaltotrainsuicides
11/02/09
In any case, it is incredibly sad for all involved -- the victims, the friends and family, and the bystanders. #paloaltotrainsuicides
11/02/09
I can't imagine what these kids' families, friends, the community, the transit employees, and the commuters must be going through. Imagine being the driver of one of these trains. . . #paloaltotrainsuicides
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@BuffySummers: The train was pulling into the station when the stroller rolled off the platform and onto the tracks. It was on the tracks rather than the rails, so the stroller was more or less safely under the train. #paloaltotrainsuicides
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There was a suicide at my brother's high school last year, and the administration was very proactive about working to avoid any copycats. It's a tricky business (compounded by the fact that it's a religious school): there's a need to reach out to those students for whom depression and suicidal ideation are already a part of their conceptual reality, but to do so without glamorizing the act as a sort of ultimate, heroic, final "fuck you". Adolescents can be notoriously indifferent to the difference between good and bad attention, and you'd have to be really dense not to notice that, if attention from adults was what this kid wanted, he got it in spades, albeit posthumously.
This is why I think a proactive approach (before any suicides) is so important: in a perfect world, suicide would become like eating paste, something that just isn't done, not because the paste isn't there, but because it's a damaging thing to do that doesn't benefit anyone.
Those poor kids. Those poor parents. #paloaltotrainsuicides
11/02/09
I live in Menlo Park, which is the next town over from Palo Alto, and I can attest that the CalTrain tracks run right through neighborhoods and business districts, and most of the crossings are level rather than grade separated ~ meaning that all a person has to do to get in front of an oncoming train is to duck under a little pedestrian gate. I've lived here for 15 years, and in that time I've crossed those tracks mutiple times every day, to get from our neighborhood to downtown Menlo Park & Palo Alto. I always cross with a touch of trepidation, even in my car and certainly when my kids & I are on bikes. So many people have been killed on the tracks during my time here that I have an abundance of respect for the trains, and I shudder a little when the non-locals come screaming through at top speed. In a contest between person and train, train *always* wins.
I knew a couple of people who killed themselves in high school, one a year to the day after finding his mom dead of a suicide in the family swimming pool, the other because his girlfriend had broken up with him. The first guy obviously had huge emotional trauma from his mother's death and might have killed himself no matter what, but the second, I think, would have gotten over the breakup and gone on to live a normal life, had he not succeeded in killing himself at 17.
I do believe that the idea of suicide waxes and wanes in young adults quite commonly, and access to quick and lethal methods of killing oneself, like CalTrain and the Golden Gate Bridge, make it all too easy for someone to act upon what might otherwise be a fleeting notion. CalTrain has to figure out a way to make these tracks less accessible. As for the pressure cooker these kids live in ~ it's real, it's acute and I don't know what the answer is. It makes me very scared for my 6 and 8-year old kids, and I just hope that I'm able to instill in them the belief that they can follow their own path, and it doesn't have to lead to an Ivy. It's crazy competitive around here, and so hard for kids to opt out of that mentality, but right now I think people are getting a hard look at the what you reap when you sow that type of hyper competitive culture.
11/02/09
But I think there is an additional problem: there is a high ratio of engineers in the population here, and a correspondingly high level of kids on the autism spectrum, especially with Asperger's Syndrome. Having AS can make it that much harder for a student to deal with the additional pressures. #paloaltotrainsuicides
11/02/09
This is my own personal struggle with this impairment due to my AS. I often, especially when I'm in a dysthemic state or upset, can't see alternatives to the situation that I am in, or can see only one way out when there are really quite a few. This is often fatalistic thinking ("I failed this test so now I will fail the class and never graduate," when the test is really a small portion of the overall grade and all other classes are going well, for example.), and most people experience it sometimes--but it is a much harder thing to break for many of us with AS.
I've never been more than passively suicidal, but I do get really fatalistic when I'm feeling depressed (and I've been in a down swing for over a year). I can very easily see how a kid on the spectrum might decide that suicide is the only solution to his problems, and remain convinced until he follows through.
(A recent study, though, showed that parents who are eningeers don't have significantly different rates of autistic kids than non-eningeers, but the more general traits may be more common in this group.) #paloaltotrainsuicides
11/02/09
As for the pressure theories discussed above - I know everyone wants to think there's an identifiable cause for suicide, but it's usually more complex than that. I had everything going for me, with incredible advantages, when I was suicidal. Later in life, when I fell on some very hard times, it wasn't even a possibility. Suicide is its own unique demon and has little to do with logic. #paloaltotrainsuicides
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I'm not sure how this would affect the teenagers in PA, as someone who grew up in East Palo Alto, an incredibly rough town surround by affluent neighborhoods, it was always difficult to know that we weren't afforded most of opportunities as a lot of the kids there. I mean we aren't even allowed to go to high schools in that school district which are all of 5 minutes away, instead we are bussed out to schools almost 20 miles away. I know this is off on a tangent, and am not trying to make it an us vs them issue, I'm just trying to understand how EPA is relevant to this situation. #paloaltotrainsuicides
11/02/09
11/02/09
I think it is important to remember that the actual window of time that a depressed person will actually go through with the act is very small. If you can interrupt it, you have a chance at saving that person, they have a chance at saving themselves. Everything passes. #paloaltotrainsuicides
11/02/09
I wish more people would openly talk about suicide. I am guilty of being silent about it because, truthfully, it scares me deeply. But I know firsthand the pain that being silent about suicide can bring. It is not something to be skirted around, hidden away or ignored. My partner's father killed himself when my partner was only five years old. He never knew it was a suicide until two decades later. He grew up knowing that something was wrong about the story he had always been told about his father's death but never knowing exactly what that was. He was a small child when it happened and he was unable to process the experience, even though he was aware on some level about what had happened. By keeping that skeleton in the closet, his family denied him the ability to process it, even when he himself started to exhibit the same symptoms of depression that his father had had, until far too many years after the fact, after he had already suffered under the weight of a childhood trauma he couldn't have articulated if he tried. When he himself began to feel suicidal when his depression got out of control, it was talking about it openly, admitting to himself and someone that he loved that he wanted to die, that ended up saving his life. And to this day, I am infinitely grateful that he did open up and he was able to talk about it and break that cycle.
If you can talk about it openly, you can save someone's life potentially. It is terrifying to look that spectre in the face, though. #paloaltotrainsuicides
11/02/09
With regard to the kids, I think Palo Alto definitely is filled with affluent families that push their kids, and define failure as not getting in to an Ivy League school. Both Gunn and Paly are pretty competitive environments, and I could imagine the pressure cooker gets to kids. In that sort of environment, to acknowledge depression or fear about one's future, could be seen as a sign of failure. #paloaltotrainsuicides
11/02/09
See, this is what I don't get. Why commit suicide if you have everything going for you. Gunn and Paly are two schools with vast resources (which I would expect since Palo Alto is like 76% white), great campuses, very respectable teachers, etc. While the pressure can be very hard you know you'll be rewarded later on for your hard work and sacrifices. And I take issue with some of this. Don't you think it's just as hard growing up in places that are the opposite of Palo Alto (you know, poor) that would cause someone to commit suicide? Pressure is everywhere. Some people can handle it very well in the most adverse of places while others who live in relative luxury cannot. That's just how life is. #paloaltotrainsuicides
11/02/09
There's so much wrong with this statement. #paloaltotrainsuicides
11/02/09
Just wanted to provide another possible angle on this incredibly sad story. #paloaltotrainsuicides
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as someone whose community was consistently affected by suicide and death in my 13 years at my school, statements like yours are upsetting to hear because in many ways it misses the point in so many ways. #paloaltotrainsuicides
11/02/09
Because at that age, in that moment, you don't. You're defined by your grades, your achievements, your capacity to perform for others and to live up to others' standards. That kind of pressure-cooker environment involves a lot of self-negation. Ignore your body's needs for sleep so that you can cram more activities into your schedule and still get seven college-level classes' worth of homework done. Stop [X]ing and work; you can [X] later when you've gotten into the right college/finished your degree/landed a respectable job. And sometimes, even when you perform as expected and get the right grades, an acceptance to the right school, the right degree for the right job, etc., you get out of school and there's a busted economy that can't or won't hire you, or a city that's priced you out, or perhaps a general disillusionment that all of your hard work and sacrifices haven't actually earned you anything that you were promised they would. #paloaltotrainsuicides
11/02/09
I have been depressed for a couple of years now and I have everything going for me. I go to an Ivy league, have great friends, great parents and nothing tragic ever happened to me. But, I dread getting up every morning and cannot phantom of it ever getting better.
I am sure these kids felt hopeless and just couldn't breathe anymore. When I was so depressed that I cried all day and did not leave the house, the only thing that prevented me from committing suicide was guilt of how my parents would deal with it.
I am currently in therapy and taking antidepressants. I hope it gets better, but the feeling of hopelessness is very strong.
So I completely understand having everything going for you, and still being completely depressed.
Saying why commit suicide if you have everything going for you is a statement that will make a person less likely seek help because they think that nobody will understand. They will feel judge and pathetic for feeling this sad, even though they have everything going for them. #paloaltotrainsuicides
11/03/09
Those things happen to white,children in schools with vast resources, too. And they can be underreported, too. And a child who is having these issues, but is still expected to perform in the top 10% to get to Stanford without the help and support he or she needs, certainly could sink into a deep enough depression to commit suicide. It's not about the weak rich people and the plucky poor people - this isn't some French propaganda from 1790. Although, let me say, it did end in those rich folks being killed. It's a dangerous path to go down, pretending that people who suffer depression, but who are rich, are somehow weaker than a person who suffers depression but has a lower income. There are some other factors, of course, but basically: assuming that because a person has an upper-middle or middle-upper income they live an easy life is just inaccurate. #paloaltotrainsuicides
11/03/09
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