Dear Next President:

I'm a student at West Albany High School in Albany, Oregon, and I'm about to tell you why suicide is plaguing our communities. The reason I picked this subject is for many different reasons including personal experience. This is a serious subject that matters to the community and everyone in it. It needs to be dealt with by talking about it in our schools, our communities, and our homes to show that it does matter if you die by suicide. If you ever felt worthless or there is no hope you’ll start to get depressed and that can lead to suicide and other problems like self harm, bipolar disorder, and eating disorders, etc. More must be done to help troubled teens

This affects the community greatly, because when someone commits suicide their pain goes to the ones they left behind, especially their friends and family. When a student at school commits suicide they tell the student then they try to move on and forget it immediately, but they do bring in grief counselors. After a kid commits suicide the whole school is affected and it's hard to move on but that’s how life is.

This past April and August I lost two of my best friends to suicide and it affected me dearly and they could have been helped if schools talked about suicide and other tough topics. Evann and Joey will be greatly missed but there's nothing that can bring them back and it's hard knowing that but we must learn to cherish the little moments we had and hold on to them as long as we can, because when they're gone they're gone for good. As Lyness D’Arcy, Phd in “about teen suicide” (www.KidsHealth.org August 2015 9/30/16) says, “For parents, the death of a child is the most painful loss imaginable. For parents who've lost a child to suicide, the pain and grief can be intensified. Although these feelings may never completely go away”. What this is saying is that the most painful thing to happen to a parent is losing a child.

The solution to fix this issue is to  go over mental health in health classes and that it's okay to ask for help because Ii know if my friends Evann Crow and Joey Castro had that choice they would have used it. You can also have a public discussion about suicide and how it affects others. Another solution should be being able to talk about suicide and depression and OCD in the open and not be judged for it because no one's perfect.

In conclusion, suicide greatly affects us all and needs to be put to a stop. “ Suicide does not end the chances of life getting worse, suicide eliminates the possibility of it getting better”- anonymous. That's why suicide needs to be dealt with.