The medical examiner later confirmed that Trevor’s neck had snapped on impact. “I knew that what I was looking at was not a living creature anymore, was not my son,” Angela said. In the ambulance, she recorded images of Trevor. “I knew I was going to need them later, because I wouldn’t believe that he was dead,” she said. “And I have needed them.” As the ambulance headed to Lenox Hill Hospital, Angela texted Billy, “He is dead.”
Angela is a devout Episcopalian, and she called Matthew Heyd, the rector of the Church of the Heavenly Rest, on Fifth Avenue. “I had told him that I knew my son was going to die,” she said. “I felt that the deaths of my brothers were purely to prepare me.” Heyd drove to the hospital. Angela said, “Matt, I’m scared, because Trevor wasn’t sure what he believed in.” Heyd said, “Angela, God believed in Trevor. That’s all that matters.”
At Lenox Hill, medical staff continued doing chest compressions. Angela said, “As we were moving into the E.R., they had him on the gurney on wheels, and I was walking, and again there are the cops with the patronizing horseshit—‘You don’t want to come in here,’ ‘You don’t want these to be your images.’ I was, like, ‘I’m all set with my images. It’s my son.’
“The E.R. doctor looked at me, and he said, ‘It appears you understand what’s happening here.’ I said, ‘I do.’ He said, ‘In my experience, there are additional measures that I can take, but they will not alter the outcome.’ And I said, ‘I know.’ ”
Angela climbed onto the gurney with Trevor’s body. “I just put my head on Trevor’s chest and listened,” she told me. “I did that every day in the morning, when we would snuggle. And this time there was no beating. His legs were badly broken and his face was pretty intact and I just held him and caressed him.”
Innumerable treatments have been proposed for reducing suicide rates. Most have had sporadic success but none has significantly reduced the scale of the problem. Currently, the best treatments for young suicidal people appear to be medication and therapies, especially Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. D.B.T. combines cognitive techniques, Zen philosophy, and mindfulness, and emphasizes effective ways of tolerating distress. Blaise Aguirre, at McLean Hospital, is a leading exponent of D.B.T., having overseen the treatment of thirty-five hundred adolescents and young adults, many of whom have had as many as ten previous psychiatric hospitalizations. Many of their parents have told him that there were no further hospitalizations, and fewer than one per cent have later died prematurely.
Although someone who has made a suicide attempt is much likelier to die by suicide than the average person, ninety per cent of those who survive a suicide attempt do not go on to kill themselves. Most are responding to a crisis, which suggests that, if you can bring them into treatment, you may save their lives. For a significant number of people, it appears that trying once brings about a permanent change in perspective.
I met one such teen, Hannah Lucas, who grew up in Cumming, Georgia. Now twenty, she was a victim of abuse as a child, and told her counsellor about it when she started therapy, at fifteen. The counsellor, who, according to Hannah, was “not culturally competent,” contacted child-protective services. Hannah is Black; the counsellor was white. C.P.S. was involved with the family for the next three years, a traumatic period for Hannah and her family. She and her brother told a C.P.S. agent to keep the troubles they disclosed confidential. “C.P.S. violated that trust,” Hannah said, and the consequences for her were severe. She maintains that the agency made things “exponentially worse.” She would show caseworkers a bruise and they would say it was a stretch mark. “But it wasn’t a stretch mark—it was a completely different color,” Hannah said.
She had been a perfectionist: beautiful, a star gymnast, an excellent student. She was taking all A.P. classes and recalls being the only Black student in any of them. But now she began getting dizzy and passing out and was so tired she could barely function. (She was later given a diagnosis of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, a nervous-system disorder that affects heart rate, blood-vessel dilation, digestion, and body temperature.) Hannah had to deal with persistent blackouts while also negotiating constant sexual harassment from other students. “It got to the point where I couldn’t even use the bathroom by myself, because what if I passed out and one of those guys found me?” she said. “I didn’t have anyone I could relate to. I always had to put on this façade of being this strong Black woman—well, not too strong, because you don’t want to scare anyone, or be the loud Black lady. I always had to be perfect.”
She told me, “The moment I decided to take my life, it was just like a switch had been flipped.” Hannah was overdosing when her mother found her and physically extracted the pills from her mouth. “I always viewed death as an escape, as peace—and I wanted that peace,” Hannah said. “She made me realize that I have anchors holding me, and that I would harm so many people in the process.”
When I met Hannah, she was taking a gap year and hoped to attend the Savannah College of Art and Design, to study luxury fashion and business management. Hannah still struggles with depression: “It’s an ongoing fight. I have my good days and bad, but I’m in therapy and see a psychiatrist, so I’m working on getting better.” Four years ago, she launched an app, notOK, which serves as a digital panic button. A user, having selected up to five trusted contacts, can with a single push of a button send them each a message asking for immediate help and automatically providing the user’s location. It has been downloaded more than a hundred and fifty thousand times.
Saniya Soni, who is from a South Asian family, decided to take her life in 2015, when she was sixteen. She told me, “Leading up to the attempt, it was always ‘If I do this, I’m going to hurt so many people,’ which was a sucky feeling of ‘I have to be responsible for all these people’s emotions when I’m hurting so much.’ Suicide may look selfish to everybody else, but, as the person who is contemplating it, you’re battling with that idea of ‘I don’t want to be selfish, I want to support all these other people, but I cannot do it anymore.’ ”
In her suicide attempt, she recalled, “I stopped myself midway through. My method just wasn’t working. I was just overwhelmed.” She called a friend, who came over, held her as she sobbed, and said she should tell her mother. Saniya’s mother took her to the E.R., where she remained for seventeen hours, until a child psychiatric bed could be found. “The psychiatric ward was not what I needed,” she said, but the mandated therapy that followed was transformative, because it included group therapy with other children who had harmed themselves. “I didn’t realize other people felt that way,” she said. “I didn’t realize what would happen if I attempted.”
Shared experience with others was also the turning point for Bridgette Robek, from Columbus, Ohio, who’d begun self-harming and speaking of suicide in her early teens. When she was in ninth grade, the suicide of a classmate put her over the edge and she was hospitalized. “I got really close with an eight-year-old boy during my stay,” she told me. “I like to think of him as my guardian angel. He was in there because he was getting bullied so bad, and he wanted to die. And that was my first time experiencing that with a young kid.” This hospitalization turned out to be key for Bridgette. “I finally realized that I wanted to get better. I didn’t want to be sick anymore.” Because of privacy laws, she wasn’t allowed to keep in contact with the boy. “I think about him a lot,” she said. “I do hope that he’s O.K. I hope . . . I’ll put it easiest—I hope he’s still alive.”
Trevor’s funeral took place on April 14th last year. Because of COVID, the service was relatively small, but nineteen boys from St. Bernard’s, including my son, were there. I had thought he might be anxious about going, but he said he was glad to be asked. It was full of music, and the eulogies, including one by Billy and one by Angela, were remarkable. Sam Fryer, a teacher at P.S. 6, said, “Because he was so bright, being Trevor’s teacher could be somewhat unnerving at moments. But the thrill of it was never lost on me.”
In the church, the St. Bernard’s boys sat together toward the back. We were among the last to file through the long reception line. Angela had been wearing large sunglasses, but now she took them off, revealing red eyes. The boys shuffled past, eyes downcast, mumbling something about being sorry for her loss. Angela put out an arm to keep them together in front of her. “It’s your loss, too,” she said. “And you are here because Trevor loved you. We couldn’t invite everyone to this service, and I want you to know you are here because you meant something to Trevor. Every one of you, even if you didn’t know it all along.” Then, with great emphasis, she said, “I want you boys to promise me—promise me—that you will talk about your feelings with one another or with your parents or with a teacher or even with a doctor. Promise me that. Because I don’t want to come to another funeral like this one.”
The medical examiner later confirmed that Trevor’s neck had snapped on impact. “I knew that what I was looking at was not a living creature anymore, was not my son,” Angela said. In the ambulance, she recorded images of Trevor. “I knew I was going to need them later, because I wouldn’t believe that he was dead,” she said. “And I have needed them.” As the ambulance headed to Lenox Hill Hospital, Angela texted Billy, “He is dead.”Angela is a devout Episcopalian, and she called Matthew Heyd, the rector of the Church of the Heavenly Rest, on Fifth Avenue. “I had told him that I knew my son was going to die,” she said. “I felt that the deaths of my brothers were purely to prepare me.” Heyd drove to the hospital. Angela said, “Matt, I’m scared, because Trevor wasn’t sure what he believed in.” Heyd said, “Angela, God believed in Trevor. That’s all that matters.”At Lenox Hill, medical staff continued doing chest compressions. Angela said, “As we were moving into the E.R., they had him on the gurney on wheels, and I was walking, and again there are the cops with the patronizing horseshit—‘You don’t want to come in here,’ ‘You don’t want these to be your images.’ I was, like, ‘I’m all set with my images. It’s my son.’“The E.R. doctor looked at me, and he said, ‘It appears you understand what’s happening here.’ I said, ‘I do.’ He said, ‘In my experience, there are additional measures that I can take, but they will not alter the outcome.’ And I said, ‘I know.’ ”Angela climbed onto the gurney with Trevor’s body. “I just put my head on Trevor’s chest and listened,” she told me. “I did that every day in the morning, when we would snuggle. And this time there was no beating. His legs were badly broken and his face was pretty intact and I just held him and caressed him.”Innumerable treatments have been proposed for reducing suicide rates. Most have had sporadic success but none has significantly reduced the scale of the problem. Currently, the best treatments for young suicidal people appear to be medication and therapies, especially Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. D.B.T. combines cognitive techniques, Zen philosophy, and mindfulness, and emphasizes effective ways of tolerating distress. Blaise Aguirre, at McLean Hospital, is a leading exponent of D.B.T., having overseen the treatment of thirty-five hundred adolescents and young adults, many of whom have had as many as ten previous psychiatric hospitalizations. Many of their parents have told him that there were no further hospitalizations, and fewer than one per cent have later died prematurely.Although someone who has made a suicide attempt is much likelier to die by suicide than the average person, ninety per cent of those who survive a suicide attempt do not go on to kill themselves. Most are responding to a crisis, which suggests that, if you can bring them into treatment, you may save their lives. For a significant number of people, it appears that trying once brings about a permanent change in perspective.I met one such teen, Hannah Lucas, who grew up in Cumming, Georgia. Now twenty, she was a victim of abuse as a child, and told her counsellor about it when she started therapy, at fifteen. The counsellor, who, according to Hannah, was “not culturally competent,” contacted child-protective services. Hannah is Black; the counsellor was white. C.P.S. was involved with the family for the next three years, a traumatic period for Hannah and her family. She and her brother told a C.P.S. agent to keep the troubles they disclosed confidential. “C.P.S. violated that trust,” Hannah said, and the consequences for her were severe. She maintains that the agency made things “exponentially worse.” She would show caseworkers a bruise and they would say it was a stretch mark. “But it wasn’t a stretch mark—it was a completely different color,” Hannah said.She had been a perfectionist: beautiful, a star gymnast, an excellent student. She was taking all A.P. classes and recalls being the only Black student in any of them. But now she began getting dizzy and passing out and was so tired she could barely function. (She was later given a diagnosis of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, a nervous-system disorder that affects heart rate, blood-vessel dilation, digestion, and body temperature.) Hannah had to deal with persistent blackouts while also negotiating constant sexual harassment from other students. “It got to the point where I couldn’t even use the bathroom by myself, because what if I passed out and one of those guys found me?” she said. “I didn’t have anyone I could relate to. I always had to put on this façade of being this strong Black woman—well, not too strong, because you don’t want to scare anyone, or be the loud Black lady. I always had to be perfect.”She told me, “The moment I decided to take my life, it was just like a switch had been flipped.” Hannah was overdosing when her mother found her and physically extracted the pills from her mouth. “I always viewed death as an escape, as peace—and I wanted that peace,” Hannah said. “She made me realize that I have anchors holding me, and that I would harm so many people in the process.”When I met Hannah, she was taking a gap year and hoped to attend the Savannah College of Art and Design, to study luxury fashion and business management. Hannah still struggles with depression: “It’s an ongoing fight. I have my good days and bad, but I’m in therapy and see a psychiatrist, so I’m working on getting better.” Four years ago, she launched an app, notOK, which serves as a digital panic button. A user, having selected up to five trusted contacts, can with a single push of a button send them each a message asking for immediate help and automatically providing the user’s location. It has been downloaded more than a hundred and fifty thousand times.Saniya Soni, who is from a South Asian family, decided to take her life in 2015, when she was sixteen. She told me, “Leading up to the attempt, it was always ‘If I do this, I’m going to hurt so many people,’ which was a sucky feeling of ‘I have to be responsible for all these people’s emotions when I’m hurting so much.’ Suicide may look selfish to everybody else, but, as the person who is contemplating it, you’re battling with that idea of ‘I don’t want to be selfish, I want to support all these other people, but I cannot do it anymore.’ ”In her suicide attempt, she recalled, “I stopped myself midway through. My method just wasn’t working. I was just overwhelmed.” She called a friend, who came over, held her as she sobbed, and said she should tell her mother. Saniya’s mother took her to the E.R., where she remained for seventeen hours, until a child psychiatric bed could be found. “The psychiatric ward was not what I needed,” she said, but the mandated therapy that followed was transformative, because it included group therapy with other children who had harmed themselves. “I didn’t realize other people felt that way,” she said. “I didn’t realize what would happen if I attempted.”Shared experience with others was also the turning point for Bridgette Robek, from Columbus, Ohio, who’d begun self-harming and speaking of suicide in her early teens. When she was in ninth grade, the suicide of a classmate put her over the edge and she was hospitalized. “I got really close with an eight-year-old boy during my stay,” she told me. “I like to think of him as my guardian angel. He was in there because he was getting bullied so bad, and he wanted to die. And that was my first time experiencing that with a young kid.” This hospitalization turned out to be key for Bridgette. “I finally realized that I wanted to get better. I didn’t want to be sick anymore.” Because of privacy laws, she wasn’t allowed to keep in contact with the boy. “I think about him a lot,” she said. “I do hope that he’s O.K. I hope . . . I’ll put it easiest—I hope he’s still alive.”Trevor’s funeral took place on April 14th last year. Because of COVID, the service was relatively small, but nineteen boys from St. Bernard’s, including my son, were there. I had thought he might be anxious about going, but he said he was glad to be asked. It was full of music, and the eulogies, including one by Billy and one by Angela, were remarkable. Sam Fryer, a teacher at P.S. 6, said, “Because he was so bright, being Trevor’s teacher could be somewhat unnerving at moments. But the thrill of it was never lost on me.”In the church, the St. Bernard’s boys sat together toward the back. We were among the last to file through the long reception line. Angela had been wearing large sunglasses, but now she took them off, revealing red eyes. The boys shuffled past, eyes downcast, mumbling something about being sorry for her loss. Angela put out an arm to keep them together in front of her. “It’s your loss, too,” she said. “And you are here because Trevor loved you. We couldn’t invite everyone to this service, and I want you to know you are here because you meant something to Trevor. Every one of you, even if you didn’t know it all along.” Then, with great emphasis, she said, “I want you boys to promise me—promise me—that you will talk about your feelings with one another or with your parents or with a teacher or even with a doctor. Promise me that. Because I don’t want to come to another funeral like this one.”