Chris Buckner was in his car chasing to get to his son, Dylan, before the 18-year-old killed himself.
It was just after 3pm on January 7, and friends warned Dylan’s parents that he might be in danger.
Karen Buckner, Dylan’s mother, checked the location services on her son’s phone. The phone dropped him off at a hotel a few miles from their home in Northbrook, Illinois. Chris went to the hotel, texted and called Dylan along the way and got no response.
“Just let him live,” Chris said, thinking over and over during the ride.
Dylan was a high school principal with a promising future. He was a star full-back, he had an average of 4.7 degrees and 14 offers to play football at Division III schools. His number one choice was MIT.
If you or someone you know is at risk for suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255, SMS TALK to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.
But over the past few months, depression that Dylan began to increase a few years ago has worsened as the places he once thrived increased due to the coronavirus pandemic: his high school classrooms, where he excelled in honors and advanced courses; the soccer field, where he was a team captain; and clubs, such as the school newspaper, where he was a sports editor.
When Chris approached the hotel that afternoon, he saw a swarm of police cars.
Immediately he knew: He came too late to save Dylan.
Across the country, there are signs of a mental health crisis among young people. Although there is no information at this stage linking suicide to teenagers at a remote school or any other by-product of the pandemic, grieving parents and mental health experts have a message for anyone struggling: help is available.
‘Suicide is not a desire to die. It is a desire to end intense emotional pain. This is a problem that they say is unsolvable, ‘says Susan Tellone, clinical director of the Association for the Prevention of Teen Suicide. “We really need to help our children see that together we can help solve the problem that is unsolvable for them.”
‘Suicide is not a desire to die. It is a desire to end intense emotional pain. ‘
The pandemic overturned Dylan’s structured school and team exercises. Activities he did in his spare time, such as mentoring for students with special needs, also disappeared.
Yet his suicide stunned everyone that day, including classmates who had seen him an hour earlier in their remote class, his mother said.
“Everyone was shocked. They said, ‘I just saw him, he was in my class at two o’clock on Zoom,’ ‘Karen said.
“But it was on Zoom,” she added. “I believe things would have been different if he had sat in class with 25 children.”
A complex problem without any cause
One night during the summer, when Dylan would normally enjoy soccer camp if the coronavirus hadn’t canceled it, Karen hears him hitting the punching bag in their basement. As she went downstairs, Dylan, who rarely cried, had tears in his eyes.
“It was very, very difficult for him to say a word,” she said. In the end, Dylan trusted that he felt really disappointed.
It was clear he needed help. The Buckners immediately got Dylan a psychiatrist. He started taking antidepressants.
Until then, Dylan had not shared with his parents that he had felt depressed for some time. He said it had gotten dramatically worse over the past few months and that it was getting worse before it got better: In September, he attempted suicide. He treated inpatient for a week and then continued with the therapy.
But in the weeks before his death, the depression seemed to be subsiding, making it all the more surprising to his parents why Dylan had killed himself. His father feels that his brain chemistry is prone to depression; the pandemic was also fatal, he said.
“If Covid did not happen, or if our country’s response to Covid was better, I think Dylan would still be here,” Chris said. ‘Covid not only kills people through the disease. It kills people through depression and suicide, and God knows what else. ”
Other parents whose children have taken their own lives in the past year – including a 16-year-old in Maine, a 12-year-old in Texas and a 13-year-old in Washington – also blamed the pandemic.
Mental health experts say suicides are complex and occur due to a combination of factors, rather than one single reason. They did not definitively link the pandemic to suicide – especially since some teenagers initially fared better when schools across the country closed.
“Children who could have been suicidal before the pandemic due to bullying at school, or fear of FOMO, like ‘all my friends do’, are all gone,” said Jonathan Singer, president of the American Association of Suicidology and an associate professor in social work at Loyola University in Chicago, which uses an abbreviation for fear of missing out.
There was also less academic pressure initially, Singer added, and many schools have promised not to speak to students this past spring.
But almost a year later, the grades are counting again in many schools that have not yet reopened, and students who thrive on interactions with peers and praise from teachers are struggling to emulate it from behind a computer screen.
“I think we need to be concerned,” said John MacPhee, executive director and CEO of The Jed Foundation, a non-profit organization that works with schools to strengthen their mental health support programs.
“For teens, one of the most important things that is being interrupted right now is the need for socialization.”
“For teens, one of the most important things that is being interrupted right now is the need for socialization,” he said. ‘They are committed to being with other people and separating their identity from their parents. It is very, very important for their identity, and this pandemic really interrupted and insulted it. ”
Even before the pandemic, suicide was the second leading cause of death among high school students, with the national suicide rate for individuals aged 10 to 24 rising 57.4 percent between 2007 and 2018.
National data on suicides in 2020 are not yet available, but there are other indicators.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the percentage of emergency mental health visits increased by 31 percent for adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17, from March to October.
Fears that isolation could contribute to mental health problems have prompted some districts to take action: in Nevada, the Clark County School District recently decided it would reopen after a spate of student murders.
According to experts, an increase in juvenile homicide during the pandemic can be prevented. “They encourage parents and other adults to look for warning signs, such as increased irritability in their children, sudden changes in their behavior or appearance, and remarks such as ‘I am a burden’ or ‘I create stress for this family,'” Tellone said. said.
Having a single trusted adult in their lives is also protective against suicide and is not necessarily a parent. It could be a coach, a teacher or a bus driver – resources that are more difficult to access when schools are closed. Yet there are many districts that are virtually implementing mental health services, from programs that warn school administrators to self-harm searches on computers issued by the school, to the training of teachers to recognize signs of distress.
“It’s important to train them and understand that they are almost alone in the front line, so that they really know what to do if they see behavior or changes in a student that cause them concern,” MacPhee said. .
‘Improve the moment’ and other tips for moments of crisis
Dylan woke up on his last day of life, his father said.
In the morning, he was excused from class to go to a promising appointment with another psychiatrist – a doctor who found Dylan when he was looking for different treatments for depression. Both he and his mother feel encouraged when the appointment ends at around 09:45
After the appointment, he records his remote high school classes and takes an AP physics test. He caught up with one of his football coaches over Zoom during lunch. After that, he reported the rest of his classes for the day and by 3 p.m., Karen said, there was apparently a switch turned around – where Dylan felt that “nothing can dig me out of this hole.”
Suicide, especially in adolescents, can often be the result of impulses, experts say – the feeling that they can not overcome a moment of intense pain, with fewer life experiences than adults to show that they can be resilient.
But even in such cases, suicide is not an inevitable outcome. Those who have survived as suicides urge all who have considered hurting themselves to have a detailed plan on how they will persevere through difficult moments.
Imadé, 33, a communications professional and mental health advocate in North Carolina who asked that she be identified only by her first name to protect her privacy, began experiencing panic attacks and depression in the eighth grade. By the age of 30, she had tried to commit suicide several times. After learning tips for dealing with depression through dialectical behavior therapy, she now helps others through the nonprofit organization she founded, Depressed While Black, which donates black affirmative care items to psychiatric patients and helps members of the black community contacting black therapists.
Listening to her favorite artist and gaining weight saved Imadé’s life. Other tips she recommends include breathing meditations; the use of crisis text lines; using the notOK app, created by teenagers to help people when they feel vulnerable; contact your therapist if you have one; link suicide prevention hotlines, which are free and available to everyone; and doing things like dipping your head in cold water or pushing an ice cube as a distraction from your feelings.
“You have to find ways to slow down the train so you can get to the other side,” Imadé said. He refers to a strategy known as ‘improving the moment’.
“Make sure you have a backup after a backup.”
The important thing, she added, is to ‘make sure you have a backup for a backup’ plan to prevent self-harm.
“Even if you are like, ‘this tool did not help me, I still feel terrible,’ it still gives you time to distance yourself from suicidal thoughts,” she said.
“Do not be ashamed”
While Dylan’s parents mourn their son, they hope they will save other teens when they talk. They fear that Dylan may have hidden how bad he felt, so that he did not upset them.
‘The message I want to share with everyone is that if children or anyone else is struggling, do not be ashamed of it. It’s not like cancer or a broken leg, ‘Chris said. “You would not expect to get better without telling your parents and going to the doctor and taking medication.”
Karen, who used to hang out with Dylan after dinner, now goes out with his teammates and friends in the evenings. They talk about how they are doing. They talk about what they’re going to miss about Dylan.
Karen said she would miss his smile, the conversations she had with him before, and his kindness.
When asked what he was going to miss most about his son, Dylan’s father stopped.
“I’ll just miss everything,” Chris says and his voice breaks. “He was the best person in my world. I will just miss everything. ”