This is the speech principal Paul Green gave at the Makoura College assembly earlier this year about the death of a former student

Last week there was a funeral service for Alex*, a young woman who for three years, up until late last year, had been part of our school community. She’d started a new phase of life in Hamilton*, but then a fortnight ago was found dead.

So it came down to the familiar ceremony: an audience in front of a coffin, a name in fine font under a photograph, favourite songs and grieving goodbyes as speakers tried to come to terms with losing someone close.

She had taken her own life and because of that there was a particular pain for those speaking — mostly around the wish to have been able to help, to talk and share some of the despair and agonised hopelessness she must have been feeling. Her death left loose ends and chaos — and hard questions, which mostly can never be answered. Our inner life can often be a complex mix of history, secrets, pain, and wishes. Part of being human is having to face the difficulties — of sometimes being lonely, bitter, hurt, empty; of feeling that we’ve failed, ourselves or someone who hoped for more from us; of feeling that we’re not good enough, not bright enough, not talented enough, not . . . enough.

How we deal with these difficulties is ultimately for us to decide, but we know that in our teenage years, weighing up how to cope with emotional pain can often be exceptionally hard — not least because the adult world often declares that some things are inappropriate for young people to think about or talk about, even while young people are actively living through those inappropriate things.

Exploring the heart of darkness through art, music, poetry, drama has always been a deep human need. And seeing how parts of our own life story have been experienced by others helps us understand that we are not alone, that others have been through the same or worse, that there’s hope — a life beyond.

But we should be careful, too, about considering what other messages are carried by scripted stories such as 13 Reasons Why, which are designed to fit the primetime drama demands for suspense and good guys and bad guys.

Suggesting that suicide is the right way to respond to the cruelties or challenges that anyone might face risks over-simplifying a very complicated situation and making it seem like a logical way of revenging yourself on others.

We certainly all need to be more aware of the impact on young people of shaming, sexual assault, sexist or racist attitudes, and online and inperson threatening, manipulation and bullying.

We need to recognise that suicide ideation, thinking about ending our lives, is a feeling and that it is right and reasonable to talk about our feelings, our doubts and uncertainties, particularly when they seem to swallow or paralyse us.

Above all, as a society and community, we owe it to ourselves to listen and to hear what is most deeply troubling our young people, you — and remember that more or less every hour of every day every one of us has important choices about how we make other people feel.”