In Johnson County, suicides dip after parents and teens team up on prevention effort

An uptick in Johnson County teen suicides in 2017 came with a cry for help. Not from distressed youths, but from their school superintendents.

Fact is, the county’s 15 teen suicides that year were part of a national upward trend that emerged, coincidentally or not, after the Netflix drama “13 Reasons Why” about a fictional girl’s suicide started airing.

Thanks to a partnership with the county’s Community Mental Health Center, the six superintendents’ angst turned to action. Today there’s a countywide, homegrown, aptly named “#ZeroReasonsWhy” mental wellness campaign led by a nine-member Teen Council — which, among other efforts, mental health center director Tim DeWeese believes may be responsible for a dip in suicides the past year.

“I think we’ve begun to see the fruits of our efforts there,” DeWeese told The Star. “It’s probably one of the coolest things that I’ve been a part of in my career.”

Existential crises have always been with us, but they can be aggravated by a number of modern stressors, including the pace of life; omnipresent and unfeeling technology; the often hurtful exchanges and bullying in electronic communications; unattainable social media personas that youths create for themselves; media bombardment of depressing news; and a timeless search for meaning in a society too often bereft of church, family and other mooring influences.

“An absence of authentic human relationships,” DeWeese says.

And then there’s the wrestling cage-match that is the internet.

“Civility is all but gone,” DeWeese notes. “It should be put on the endangered species list because it’s just nonexistent within our culture. We wonder why our kids are hateful to one another. Adults do not provide good role models for them in that. We can’t simply disagree. We can’t find common ground. We don’t know how to compromise.”

All these stressors can be compounded by what DeWeese says are the high expectations of a community regarded, by itself and others, as high-caliber.

When 17-year-old Sloane McKinney was in preschool, her teacher asked the students what they wanted to do when they grew up. “I said I want to help people who are sad,” she says. “Even though I’m a bit more articulate now, that idea still stands.”

She would go on to have good reason to do what she envisioned in preschool, seeing mental health struggles in others and experiencing them herself — suffering from anxiety “before I even knew what that was.” That’s why she’s on the Teen Council and promoting #ZeroReasonsWhy — as are increasing numbers of businesses and community groups, with fliers, shirts and wristbands.

“It took me a long time to realize that you are not your mental illness,” McKinney says.

The first step to prevention and wellness in teens and children is to understand that suicidal desperation can’t always be seen or readily heard and must be ferreted out by caring adults asking the right questions. Not “how are you doing?” which invites hollow, misleading “I’m fine” small-talk. Rather, DeWeese says, ask what good or bad happened today, and share what good or bad things happened to you — “so that you’re having this authentic human interaction,” he says.

You can certainly see purpose in the faces of the county’s Teen Council members — even in the face of what many of them have already encountered in life. Just prior to his freshman year — a challenging time for any of us — Rory’s mother died by her own hand. Hanna lost her older brother to suicide. Abigail did too, and struggles with her own anxiety and depression.

Now they want to help others.

DeWeese is buoyed by that, and by what he sees as an encouraging yearning for meaning in Johnson County youths.

“When you spend time with young people today, that is one thing that I hear from them — is that they want to make a difference. I’m hopeful that we can help young people find that purpose.”

But he also hears them saying to adults: Put down your phone and listen to us. We act like we don’t want you involved in our lives, but we really do. It may not be a full-blown cry for help. But it’s certainly a call for love.

Shannon Demaree cautions other parents not to miss such signs, as she feels she did. When her formerly fireball youngest daughter began cloistering herself in her room, sneaking out, rejecting school and changing what had been longtime friends, Demaree and her husband saw it as defiance that demanded discipline. What their daughter really needed was help. Thankfully she got it, both in and out of Olathe Public Schools.

And now? “We have our daughter back. We thought that we had lost her, and we have her back. I’m happy to say I have a bratty teenager,” Demaree says wryly. “I’m just thrilled that we have a normal teenager.”

“I can’t stress enough how important it is to talk to people about whatever you’re going through,” says McKinney — whose own advocacy for mental wellness has led at least four people she knows of to seek help.

“That’s really empowering to know that you’re helping someone,” she says.

Her preschool self would be so proud of her.

Editor’s note: There are many resources for those in crisis, including:

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255

National Crisis Text Line: 741-741

Local community mental health centers: mentalhealthkc.org/local-agencies/

This story was originally published January 31, 2020 at 5:00 AM.