Heather calls my office for an urgent appointment, she is a new patient looking for a consultation. Sensing her need for immediate help, I open up a session for a Saturday morning.
She is a 50’sh woman, casually dressed, wearing no make-up, no fresh manicure, blonde-gray hair pulled back in a pony tail. She looks more bewildered than sad when she starts telling me a story that no mother would ever want to hear from another woman :
“I am here because my son Andy, my youngest child, killed himself 2 weeks ago. He was 21, a junior at SUNY Purchase, a wonderful kid who had everything going for him. He was an A-student but this semester he had come home from College, he needed a break, he said. He was considering dropping out of school and becoming a fireman. He was not talking much, was not going out, was spending most of the time in his room working on his computer, probably filling out applications, I thought. He did not look different, he did not say he was depressed.”
“That Thursday morning”, she continued, “I left for work as usual, his bedroom door was still closed. I had not yet reached the school where I teach when the shattered glass tone of a message came on my phone with Andy’s name, so I did not stop and waited till I got to the school parking lot and looked, Andy was saying ‘Goodbye, Mom, I‘m sorry, forgive me, I cannot stand the pain any longer’.”
“I rushed back home to find him in a pool of blood in his bedroom. He had shot himself in the head. I would have never suspected that Andy could buy a gun online, and how could I know he wanted to kill himself ?“
In the US the debate over firearms legislation has always been a hot issue dividing the nation, one of the few where both parties equally seem to hesitate to take a strong definitive stand. In New York state buying a gun online is perfectly legal and uncomplicated if you are 21. No background checking necessary, no mental health clearance.
We all have heard about accidents where children and adolescents are killed by a gun that has been mishandled or when they are the innocent victims caught in a crossfire, but we don’t talk enough about another dire reality concerning guns: young people, 10 to 24, committing suicide using firearms, that either belong to their parents and are carelessly stored at home or that they have easily bought themselves online or in the black market. Statistics say that suicide is the third cause of death in that age group after accidents and murder.
The suicide rate among young people has increased almost every year since 2007 and is now at a near-record high. The causes for this dramatic surge are still under investigation, but one considered particularly relevant seems to be the “post-pandemic gap”, already mentioned in this column.
On average, over 3,000 children and adolescents ages 0 to 19 die each year in the U.S. from a firearm injury. 4 in 10 of those deaths are by suicide.
If we consider the pre-teen and teen groups, it stands to reason to assume that the firearms used for suicidal aims are the ones found at home and for which the adults in the family are responsible. Hence the paramount role that the parents play in educating children and setting examples in the handling of firearms, both in the heart-breaking instance of a suicide and in the even more tragic event of a mass shooting.
On Apr 9, 2024 — Jennifer and James Crumbley, the first parents convicted in a U.S. mass school shooting, were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison.
