Preventing Suicide

My 10-year-old son attempted suicide last week.

I’m not sure if it was a legitimate attempt or a cry for help, but it doesn’t really matter. Our response is the same. It has to be.

He’s been struggling since the second week of school (i.e. since the bullying incident). The bullying was dealt with, but he’s doing poorly academically, he hasn’t made friends, and he’s had some stressful experiences. In short, he’s depressed.

About ten days ago, there was incident in the locker room where the kids realized he was extremely uncomfortable changing in public, so all the boys turned and stared at him until he was dressed. That’s when he started talking about suicide.

We informed the teachers and started the laborious process of getting treatment for him. Step one is a telephone interview with me, for triage purposes, and they couldn’t do it before today.

Last Wednesday, his class watched a film about global warming that announced the world is going to end in 2064 if we don’t stop depletion of the ozone layer. Apparently Mad Scientist spent the day thinking about the world ending, and about the fact that he’d probably have young grandchildren in 2064. He pictured watching his grandchildren perish …

And wrapped his earbud wires around his neck, crossed them in front of his throat, and pulled both ends.

A classmate asked if he was trying to kill himself, and he said, “Yes.”

The classmate told the teacher (a substitute who didn’t know he was a suicide risk), but she did nothing other than leave a note for the regular teacher.

When Mad Scientist got home from school, he told me he’d tried to strangle himself (though I misunderstood and thought he used his hands, which is physically impossible). We talked about the film, and I tried to explain that the end-of-the-world view isn’t accepted across the board, nor is it a foregone conclusion in anybody’s mind.

I asked if he was actively planning his suicide, or just thinking about it as something he’d like to do, and he said the latter (keep in mind: I didn’t realize he’d already made a serious attempt). So I asked him to please talk to me if he got to the point where he was going to take action, and he agreed.

The next morning, we were getting ready for school when he came to me and said, “I’m thinking about jumping out the window.” Our house has high ceilings, and there’s a straight drop from the third-story balcony to the ground, so this was not an idle threat, especially when he told me later he was also considering an interior, head-first, two-story dive onto the stone tile of the kitchen floor.

I asked if he would be safe at school, and he said, “I don’t think so.”

I put Girly Girl on the bus and after making some phone calls, took Mad Scientist to the Emergency Room, thinking it would be the fastest route to treatment.

The ER staff was wonderful, and we left with a referral to a mental health group that was going to see him the next day (last Friday). I just needed to call them to set up a time.

Or so I thought. And so I believe the ER doctor thought.

What I actually had was the phone number for the same group with which I already had a phone interview — and an offer to change my phone interview from today to last Friday.

Let me restate that because I still don’t quite believe it: Alberta Health Care’s response to the suicide attempt of a 10-year-old was to move up an administrative intake interview by one business day.

I took the appointment, hoping (and at least partly assuming) that the moment the intake person heard my story, they’d bring him in for treatment.

I was wrong. At the end of the phone interview, she consulted a calendar and gave me the first available appointment — December 28.

He has to wait almost two weeks to see a psychologist, and even then, it’s only an “assessment,” not treatment. An assessment at which he’ll be asked all the same questions I just answered, to get “his side of the story.”

Apparently the only other choice we have is a residential facility, and both the ER doctor and the children’s mental health folks said that with children, it’s generally better to keep them in their familiar surroundings and normal routines (though both also said not to send him to school, and I can’t stop crying, so I don’t know what’s normal about it).

I miss this boy, my golden boy. So sunny and bright.

I asked how we would keep him safe, and they said to keep him under constant observation.

So for the next two weeks, Mad Scientist will hardly be allowed to leave our sight. I’ll shower when Mars is home. When he’s out of town (as he is today), I’ll take a very quick shower and pray furiously.

And we’ll try to celebrate Christmas — the first Christmas in twenty years that I haven’t spent with either my parents or my sister’s family — though neither of us is feeling the spirit. Mostly, we’re just counting the days until it’s over, and we can get treatment for our sad young son.

These are dark, dark days. Indeed, the Winter Solstice is the day after tomorrow, and a part of me wonders if I should spend it dancing around a bonfire and praying the light returns.

 

Note: I debated whether or not to blog about this. Heck, I didn’t for almost two weeks. But I don’t think it helps anyone for parents like us to struggle along in silence and in private. Maybe it’ll help more people than just the two of us to talk about it openly.

Advertisement