We look to schools to address most of the social problems faced by children and teenagers and youth suicide is no exception. Many of the personal difficulties giving rise to suicide risks may originate outside school but it is there that classmates, alert teachers and, ideally, skilled counsellors are in a position to see the danger signs and offer timely help. If anything can be done to reduce the number of teenaged suicides in this country - the highest rate in the developed world - it probably has to happen in schools.
Most New Zealanders probably suppose schools are already trying to deal with the problem, as we supposed when we contacted the country's 507 secondary schools top ask how they were handling it. Alarm bells rang when just over half of them refused to engage with us, some saying, "not everyone believes in media coverage of this issue". It became very clear from those who did respond, that the gag on this subject does not just apply to news media, school teachers are told not to talk about suicide in class discussion.
This is extra-ordinary. The classroom is the one place in their lives that school students would expect to be able to have a serious discussion among themselves moderated by a mature person who is not as emotionally involved as their parents. Students have a right to expect this at school and most of us would have been under the impression it was happening because news of a young person's death often mentions the efforts the school is making to help a class deal with it.
But Olivia Carville's report yesterday revealed that when a suicide occurs a trauma team from the Ministry of Education comes to the school and writes a "script" for the principal and teachers to read to students. The script aims to minimise discussion of suicide, and does not mention why it happens or how to prevent it. "It's ministry policy to say sudden death, never suicide," explained a ministry psychologist, Roger Phillipson. "Even if students ask questions, we would advise teachers that they stick to the script." It should be noted that the Ministry relaxed its suicide policy in 2013, allowing schools to say a death may be a "suspected suicide".
