Another heartbreaking teenage suicide:
…and still there is so much misunderstanding and mind boggling ignorance about depression! There are still people out there who believe that people who die from the mental illness, depression, are selfish, selfish for dying and leaving their loved ones brokenhearted!
ALL PARENTS MUST TAKE NOTE! In this case, depression was clearly not a silent, invisible killer. It’s easy to judge this case now, with the benefit of hindsight, but the lesson is that if a child says he or she is being bullied, he/she must be taken seriously. Even if what the idiot work colleagues were doing was ‘usual’ practice, the fact that this poor kid felt that he was being bullied meant that the matter had to be dealt with as a case of bullying – what’s important is what George felt, not the ‘justification’ given by the heartless, cruel reprobates who worked with him.
BUT spotting depression is not always so easy! It is often invisible, it is often a silent killer. People suffering from depression can hide it very well. How often we hear people say, in response to learning of a friend’s suicide, “I can’t believe it, he/she was smiling and laughing when I saw him/her last week”. Even if the symptoms of depression are visible, suicide is rarely expected and this is why: loved ones looking in, those who have never suffered with depression, those who understand, who see everything through the prisms of rationale and logic, they, of course, can’t grapple with the idea or thought that someone might want to end their life but sufferers who do ‘decide’ to end their lives, they aren’t seeing the world – their world – through those prisms of logic and rationale, they are not gauging whether it ‘makes sense on paper’ and it’s that different way of looking at the world which creates the chasm, the colossal distance, between the sufferer and his/her loved ones.
Parents must ensure that they have a heightened sense of awareness in relation to their children and the world, as far as they can assess, in which their children live.
Parents must remember that depression can be invisible, completely invisible, that sufferers can hide it.
Parents must be aware that depression skews rational thinking so that it is no longer rational and that sufferers often make decisions whilst thinking irrationally and illogically.
Parents must acknowledge that if children say that they are being bullied, it’s irrelevant if they, the parents, do not consider what is happening to be bullying – all that is important and relevant is that the child believes that he/she is being bullied, all that is relevant is how the child feels.
Parents must understand that if a child is upset or worried about something, all that is important is that that something is upsetting or worrying their child and that it’s irrelevant if they, the parents, don’t think that what is happening is so bad.
ALL parents must accept and appreciate that whilst their children might be smiling, they might, at the same time, behind the smiling, be crying, be in such turmoil that they don’t even know where to begin in telling their parents what is happening in their lives.
Parents, always be aware….
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