Hi there.
A warning before we get started.
Today's episode is about suicide and includes references to sexual abuse.
If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide, please call the National Suicide prevention lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK.
This is in conversation from Apple News.
I'm Shemitah Basu.
Today, why it's so hard to assess suicide risk in children and what parents should know.
On April 14th of 2021, Andrew Solomon attended a funeral with his 12 year old son, George.
I had thought that he might be upset by the idea of attending a funeral, but he was actually glad to have been asked and I think it gave him some feeling of completion or closure to have been asked.
The funeral was for a boy named Trevor Matthews, who George had gone to school with.
And this was a very beautiful funeral.
It was very high church, There was spectacular music.
And we listened to these evocations of Trevor and all the things he had accomplished and all of the good that he'd done in the world and just felt how much frustrated and broken love there was in the room for somebody who was now gone.
Trevor died by suicide.
He jumped off the roof of his family's apartment building in New York City just a few months after his 12th birthday.
At the end of the funeral service, Andrew's son George and a few of his classmates were some of the last to file out.
As they passed Trevor's mother, she stopped the boys.
She took off the large dark sunglasses she'd been wearing, revealing her red eyes.
And she said to them, I want.
You boys to promise me, to promise me that you will talk with one another, with your parents, even with the doctor, with a teacher about what is going on inside your head through this difficult time, she said, because I don't want to ever come to another funeral like this one.