School hears a powerful message about suicide
A principal chooses to be upfront about the issue to students, reports
Makoura College principal Paul Green chose not to sidestep the truth after one of his former students took her own life. “I said she died by suicide. I didn’t want to be brutal about it, but I did want to be plain and clear. I felt that it was right for me to be open with the school community,” Green said.
“I wasn’t obscuring how she died. I was just quietly, truthfully acknowledging it and doing it with integrity. I wasn’t sidestepping it or getting into vague half-references.”
The New Zealand Herald is running a special series on youth suicide called Break the Silence. This week we are investigating the way the issue is handled inside our schools. We found suicide is not openly discussed with students because of fears talking about it will lead to further deaths.
Green attended his former student’s funeral because she left the school only a few months earlier. He said her family members spoke about the dark pain she had faced before her death.
He decided that message needed to be relayed to his current students, regardless of the policies or guidelines.
“I really wanted to talk about and acknowledge the pain and difficulty and darkness everyone faces at times and that feeling like you might want to end it is part of the human condition when you’re dealing with serious challenges,” Green said.
“We should open up the conversation about suicide as an issue of acute importance. We’re not doing things the right way right now. Not being clear or entirely honest in the way we represent things can muddy the meaning and make it more difficult for our young people to understand the depths of some things.”
Green has worked in six schools of varying deciles in New Zealand and said suicide was an issue in every one.