Bringing suicide prevention into clearer focus

Local group aims to get to the root cause of such an untimely death

For Kathleen Snyder of Yuba-sutter, Suicide Awareness Month is personal.

Snyder’s grandfather committed suicide in 1949 and her mother attempted in 1969. Then it got worse.

“What many people would say is the worst thing that could ever happen, happened to me,” she said. Snyder’s husband committed suicide in 1984, when their son was three years old. “It was absolutely devastating. It was the unexpected. It’s something you pray to God that you never have to go through.”

Snyder said the loss of her husband was very difficult. She said her faith helped her through it and she decided to make sure good came out of the situation.

She later finished school and obtained a master’s degree in social work. She has studied and been an advocate for the prevention of suicide for some three

decades. Snyder is now a representative for Livingworks Education, an organization dedicated to preventing suicide. She said her organization aims to train people to have healthy conversations about suicide and get to the root of the problem rather than labeling someone as suicidal.

She said community members should pay more attention to each other and start asking each other if they are okay.

“Suicide is no respecter of persons. Doctors, veterinarians – people we think are the strong ones have a breaking point. They need to know they can get help without fear of judgement,” Snyder said.

“Most people don’t really want to die. They just want the pain to go away. They want to be heard and sometimes that’s

hard in this society.”

Snyder said suicide rates have gone up within the last few years and that clinicians all over are scrambling to find the cause. She said a lot of it is believed to be because of social media.

Kerry Covella, the school Counselor at Lindhurst High School, agreed that social media may have something to do with the increase. She said suicide rates among teens are also on the rise.

“I’m 30. When I was in high school cell phones were just coming out. When we got out of school we could go home and escape everything that may have happened on campus but it’s not like that anymore,” she said.

Covella said the problem with social media is that teenagers get it confused with real life and allow what they see to affect their still-developing emotions. She said suicide prevention awareness is observed on campus and that she reminds her students that few things in life are final but that one of those is

suicide.

“They need to understand the finality of suicide. Life gets hard, but it’s always the darkest right before dawn.”