 Today, a Centers for Disease Control Report stated that suicide was the second leading cause of death for 10 to 24-year-olds after a category of accidental deaths that includes motorcycle, excuse me, motor vehicle crashes, falls, drowning, and overdoses. With us today, we have a panel, and we'll be speaking about policies, procedures that we can help ring the bell and reduce teenage suicide. And I'm pleased to share with you that I'm Tina Patterson, I'm in Germantown, Maryland. I am sitting in for Chuck Crumpton, who is on well-deserved vacation today. With us, we have an outstanding panel, and I'm pleased to, I feel kind of like Julie Andrews, a few of my favorite people are here with me today, and we're going to have a very exciting conversation. I do want to share with you at the onset of this conversation that we are not mental health care practitioners, and if you do need assistance, we'll talk at the end of the session about resources that are available to you. But if you are in distress at this moment, please call 911. With us, our first guest is retired judge Sandra Sims from Hawaii, and she is not only a retired judge, but she is author of Tales from the Bench, Essays on Life and Justice. Also with us this evening is Louise Ng, who is a partner at Dentons in the Honolulu Office. Louise believes the better you know the community, the more you can help your client. Also with us this evening is Rebecca Rattler, a world-renowned mediator and arbitrator at Jams, and she is a global thought leader, conflict resolution and DEI consultant, risk management professional, and adjunct law professor at Howard University, and recently takes on the title of being best-selling author. We also have with us this evening a special guest, and I like to think of her as my sister from another mister, and that is Lorraine Delaporta, who hails from Cranston, Rhode Island, so we are both, it's amazing, Lorraine and I never met each other, I originally grew up in Rhode Island, but she's from Cranston, and she is the president of the Resolution Collaborative. So welcome, and as I mentioned, tonight's topic is teen suicide. Justin, for all of you, and I know generally on this show we talk about partisan politics and how politics plays into, do you see politics playing into this discussion regarding teen suicide? Anyone? I would hope not. I would hope not. This is such a critical issue, as you given those statistics, I would think that we have to really, really be more and more and more concerned about what is happening to our young people. We've come out of this, I don't say we've come out of this COVID, but we went and we have come out of an era in which it's had drastic ramifications for all of us, not just here in the United States, but all around the world, coming out of the isolation. We're not able to attend schools, and when they did, they were under some very restrictive conditions. Families were stressed at home. Employers and employees were stressed in their work environments, and in the midst of this, there were parents and aunts and grandparents raising children. So this can't be politicized. There was an article I just was looking at that was in the Pacific Business News talking about our children growing up in an age of anxiety, which not just the children, but we are adults as well in this age of anxiety, this sort of, I don't want to call it post-COVID, because we're not really out of it yet. We're still having to deal with its ramifications, but that's my thought. I think it's important to note that COVID is still among us. It's not a pandemic, but it's endemic. I have a friend who's an infectious disease doctor. When he said endemic, I had to look that up. I didn't know what it meant, but it's like the flu. It will be among us now ongoing and forward. And as you eloquently stated, Judge Sims, we still do not know what the effects of COVID are. As a society, we have not recovered from the thick of things globally. And the same confusion and instability that's being experienced by adults is being experienced by children for one of the reasons you mentioned, lack of socialization for really a couple of years, and that really affects children and academic. And I see even in higher level learning the effects that being away, being isolated, the change in how curriculum was presented, I see the effects that that has even on students, even at a law school, at a level such as law school as an example. And so we're still trying to figure out the next normal. We just, you know, there was instability caused by overlapping pandemics. So there's COVID and then I've been published to say overlapping pandemics are COVID, civil unrest, weather events, the economic downturn, which then caused other issues. Food instability, job instability, a lot of issues surfaced and the age of anxiety that you speak of is prevalent everywhere and is being felt by young and old. I think, Tina, if I can chime in, in terms of fear of this becoming politicized, one of the things I worry about is with politics is access to services for young people, access to good health care, access to mental health services, you know, for young women, access to reproductive health. All of those things, I think, have run the risk of being politicized and that keeps me up a little bit at night. I had to think about that question, Tina. And all of you triggered my thoughts, which is that, yes, politics is playing a role. We're seeing that in states where there is not only, not only is there the age of anxiety, all those, all these crisis things, but states that are trying to suppress the rights of LGBTQ kids, for instance, denying gender-affirming care, denying the teaching of history that fully recognizes, you know, the bad parts of our history that we should be learning from. So yes, I think that there's definitely that. I'm hopeful that there seems to be more attention paid to mental health. There's obviously not enough because every time we have a mass shooting, it's often by somebody who has had mental health concerns, but nothing seems to be done about the gun control issue or increasing mental health services in those states that espouse the use of guns so widely. Louise, it's interesting you should mention guns. I'm going to share a factoid with you that I found in the Centers for Disease Control report, and that is guns were used in 54% of suicides in 2021. I don't know if that number will shift and spiral down, but it is noticeable that, again, to see such a high percentage. One of the things that experts across the board have been saying, and we have data that goes back as early as back to the 1980s, one thing that experts continue to say is that preventing suicide starts with an open and honest conversation. And I'm curious, based on your experience and your interface with youth and adolescents, what do you suggest in terms of where the conversation begins? Well, I think we have to be good listeners for one. It seems and also maybe just be aware. It just seems like from what the anecdotal stories I've heard, it's kids who feel alone and isolated and seem to have nowhere to turn. And we as adults are really oftentimes just focused on living our own lives or trying to worry about the care of our kids and maybe not putting ourselves in their shoes very much. One of the good things that happened during the pandemic is that the Bar Association did have a presentation by a woman who has an expert who has worked in the suicide prevention area and they have a video. I wonder if it's out there, but she did talk about red flags and things to watch out for. Do you remember the name of it, Louise? No, I'm going to have to look. But Liam Deely, who is the head of our substance abuse program for lawyers and judges, it's his mother, actually, Mrs. Deely, who worked in that area, who gave a presentation and I think maybe also had an associate helper. I was watching the view the other day. And one of the topics was how involved should parents be? They had a conversation in the video. How involved should parents be in their watching how their children socialize? Should parents be checking cell phones? Should parents be reading a diary, for instance? And Sunny was saying that she still suffers some trauma from feeling betrayed because I forget who it was. Somebody in her family read her diary, who was very personal. I forget it might have been one of a sibling, I forget. But then there was this robust discussion around whether parents should be reading a diary. And I believe it was Joy Behar who said, well, I think it depends. Not every child should be keeping secrets because that's how you, you know, they may be, you know, you have to know the child because they may be putting in the diary that they're being bullied. I mean, how are you going to know depends on the age, depends on the relationship, depends on the child's personality style, your observations. And I thought those were really good points because while, you know, depends again on the age of the child, how do they need to be, you know, until they have, they deserve or they've earned privacy or, you know, there are so many things going on now in our society and we have to keep, you know, tabs on. I hadn't really decided whether I thought parents should read a diary or not. But I agreed with Joy and then Whoopi weighed in and was saying that she agreed that you've got to know the child. And sometimes you think you do know the child, but there are things going on with social media. Everybody's overexposed, even, you know, seasoned adults. And so with that, you know, just given the realities in our society, it's important to know what's going on with your child because some people have been surprised by their younger and older children's suicides. Yeah. Yeah. And another piece of that, those are good points to bring up, Rebecca, but another piece of it, though, when we're looking at the suicide rates among teams, we're looking at kids who are not necessarily in situations where they often have access to a parent that is even listening or concerned about what's in their diary. Great point. I think those are the I'm not to dismiss the others, but I think when we look at these rates, those are the ones that we as a society really they've got they don't have that, you know, unless they're organizations or like mental health or whatever that are advocating for those kids. They're out there. They're just kind of out there and they're more probably more susceptible to all the other places. Some of them are like one of the things I used to notice when I was on the state council mental health. We talked about we often talked about kids that run away, you know, the whole our laws about truancy and and and all those things having to address why kids run away. And oftentimes when they're running away, they're running away from something, particularly the girls, there is something that has happened. And it is that group that you've got to be because it's not to diminish anyone else, but it's that group just recently there was a report that came out about the detention center, one of the juvenile detention centers here in Honolulu. That you're beginning to address that issue. Like what is it that's going on rather than just saying, you know, you ran away or you didn't go to school today or whatever. Let's find out what's taking place. Let's move back to what you were saying, at least about the listening. You didn't listening is a way to begin because otherwise knows what's going on in their lives and they're in their in their minds. And the media, social media is a is a is a plus and a minus. I mean, it's right. It's good and it's not good sometimes. But I it's it's a really tough issue, Tina. Why do you pick this? This is really hard because, you know, it's we have to be concerned about it and we have to do what we can to not make it so it is politicized. I tried to, you know, sugarcoated, but it is. I mean, it goes back to the issues, particularly with regard to gun control. Can you imagine the kids who have grown up doing shooting drills in school? I mean, good Lord, when you starting like at six years old, particularly the kids that came out of Sandy Hook, they're like, college age now, they've not gotten over that trauma. There's no way. What are they carrying with that? Lots of trauma. So, so, Tina, I took in preparation for tonight, I took a look. So CDC has great information about what are some risk factors. And I looked at the list of risk factors. And one thing that I found incredibly stunning was all of them seem to have some tie to unresolved conflict either at school in the family, in the community. So this is where I kind of thought about, you know, those of us that do conflict resolution, what can we do to help build some capacity for, you know, places people can go to get some skills and build some resilience and some capacity to engage these conflicts. So conflicts on social media, the bullying, you know, the unresolved issues in the family that cause teens to run away. All of it seems to tie back to they don't have a way to resolve those conflicts and to gain that resilience. Yeah, a way to process it. I was reading, Tina was kind enough to send us some articles just in case we had time to look. And really quickly, I was I was looking at one of the articles and a point that was made, which I think is important, is that a lot of times. So minority children, black children, specifically, have a higher rate of and growing. So, yeah, the statistic is from 2018 to 2021, the racial group that has seen the largest increase in suicides among people, 10 to 24 years old was black individuals with an increase of 37 percent from 2000 to 2020. So the these are shocking. These are shocking rates. And one of the things that was mentioned as a I don't know if it's a cause, but it's a reality is that sometimes mental health issues are not diagnosed and they are called behavioral issues versus having the child assessed for, yeah, for a mental health diagnosis. And so you have children who are chemically imbalanced. And then, as Judge Sims mentioned, you may have a child who was an orphan, lost of a parent. There are lots of lots of reasons that trauma exists here in Atlanta. There is Covenant House. It is a home for it's a place for homeless teenagers. You're familiar. And my initial in my initial acquaintance with Covenant House, I asked myself as we were doing community service here with the Insurance Association that I was leading here. They were our pick twice in the year for community service. And my thought was. Ignorantly, why would why would teenagers be? I had a teenager. So why would teenagers be homeless? Well, there are lots of reasons. Louise, you mentioned, you know, rejection. So runaways, rejections, rejection because of the LGBT community. So many different reasons. This really is a topic. Different adverse childhood experiences. And I guess A.C.E. is a term that's being used in connection with these causes for for teenage suicide. You asked a good question. Sorry. I'll wait, Louise. You're going to say something. Oh, no, I was just going to say, you know, just as Sandra said, and it's really an issue that should not be politicized because, you know, everybody has kids. We all are concerned about them. You think part of the problem is, you know, mental health issues or just talking about them are soaked under the rug. Also that, you know, we need to educate ourselves more about what to look for in terms of red flags. And it's not necessarily the person who's got an extreme mental health problem. Yeah, yeah, I think some self education is needed for everybody. I don't know. I think that's that's that's critical. I mean, you keep hearing these things that when the incidents occur and they say, oh, we have to, particularly, you know, the multiple shootings. Oh, there's a mental health issue. We have to address the mental health issue. I always tend to back away because I want to say we have to really educate ourselves about mental health is a lot of people have mental health issues. They don't all shoot people. That's true. Just because someone has a, you know, a mental health condition doesn't mean they are necessarily violent and that most are not violent. They're just having issues that need to be addressed that lead to other things such as particularly with our, you know, the teen girls, the severe, you know, depression. It's when kids are depressed, that's what's going to get you into this place of contemplating things like suicide because of all the pressures that are around it. So I think we really do have to educate ourselves about what is mental health and mental health treatment. I'm kind of happy to see and I don't want to use the term happy, but at least that even on social media, there is now this emphasis on having access or finding, you know, people who can address some of your mental health, you know, just somebody to talk to. Yes. And sometimes that's just that may be it. Someone to thank you. I was at a lunch yesterday with a group of, you know, women who were retired and some of them have come out of, you know, this extreme isolation, you know, with COVID experience, COVID experienced, you know, trauma during that time. And one of the ladies was saying. She said, just doing this, just sitting here. We went and looked at our exhibit and had lunch. And she said, just doing this, this means a lot. I am ready, you know, just to, just to connect with people. We were kind of in an open air place and just to listen to people's experiences and stories and laugh. And she said, I needed this. And sometimes maybe that's kind of what we need ourselves so that we can prepare to listen to what the kids are saying because we got all our own heads all messed up with stuff, too. So that just struck me. And she just was so just grateful for the opportunity just to be out and connect what they call connecting with people. Not so much always, you know, hanging out at your house or anything, but just connecting. Feeling connected. Yeah. That was what she emphasized. And I thought, oh, this really is the thing that we just need that sometimes. So, yeah, I know I'm on that board of mental health. And one of the things that mental health has been doing is doing some trainings in this area for youth suicide and training for people to learn about the recognized signs for, you know, for bullying and bullying prevention. And, you know, even one, they're even doing a session on on mental health first aid, sort of like how to recognize when there's something that needs to be addressed. So you're not just, as my daughter is saying, you know, instead of approaching someone from their perspective about what's wrong with you, you know, why don't you do right rather than trying to find out what what happened? How can I help you? What is it, you know? Chandra, you raised a question and I'll be transparent. What made me bring this topic forward? And it's actually, I have to give credit to what credit is due. Professor Renelia Randall had spoken to me back in late March, early April, and she shared a statistic. And it's from a report that was published in April of 2023 by Professor Janelle Goodwill with the University of Chicago. And the study is included in the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities. And this was literally talking about that as Rebecca stated, this spike in suicides, especially among black or African American children or youth. And one of the key findings was the feeling of hopelessness about the future as being one of the primary reasons black young adults consider suicide. And that was, it was hard for me to hear that because we have so much going on and people blame all the internet and social media and all these other factors. But if there is a feeling of hopelessness, there's a center, there's a route to that hopelessness. And how do we as adults recognize that message is having a detrimental effect on our children? I think what Louise talked about, there's an intersectionality. So let's talk about, or I may be think about you have a African American youth who happens to also identify or be consider themselves a part of the LBGQ plus community. Yeah. So now there's this intersection and that feeling of hopelessness where you've got legislation and you don't have the wraparound services that are available. That's what maybe you want to talk about it, not necessarily as a mental health practitioner, but as leaders of change in our communities where we can say, you know, I'm on this board or my jurisdiction, our school board has said, we're going to offer mental health services. And we want to communicate to our youth, if you need help, if you're feeling isolated, if you are feeling suicidal and you don't know what quite to call it, but you feel like life isn't worth living, talk to a trusted adult. Doesn't have to be mom or dad, but it should be a trust that an adult that you can trust that's going to listen to you without judgment and get you the help that you need. And I will say this, and I think I could say this for all five of us, if you are doing something to hurt yourself, we have an obligation to intervene and get you the help that you need. And any trusted adult is going to do that. They're not telling on you to get you in trouble, but they're telling on you because they want you to live. And that's what started this conversation for me. I thought, you know, this is something we need to talk about. I, Professor Randall, unfortunately, wasn't available this evening. And that's fine because the four of you that are here, your grandmother, your aunts, your leaders in your community, and you know what youth need. You interface with youth. And that's why I wanted to bring this up. We have less than a minute remaining. So I'm going to go round Robin and give you an opportunity to share your final thoughts on this topic of teen suicide, policies, procedures. What should we be doing? What can we be doing? And we'll start with LaRaine. Perfect. So thank you for convening this. This is an important conversation. My parting thoughts are that we need to build an infrastructure in schools and in communities to engage conflicts and things that are troubling youth. All right, FAB3, I'm usually part of the FAB4. So I'll leave it up to you. I'm so glad that LaRaine is here this evening and I didn't want her to go last, which is what she would try to do. So FAB3, I'm going to leave it up to you. Final words. 98. Oh, sorry. So does everyone know what 98? Yes. You can text the message to 988. It's time to say more about 988, please. That is the line that's sort of come to replace to address mental health and suicide issues. So you don't have to call up 911. If you're in that situation or you know if someone or we as those sick and being those trusted adults, we can down 988. And it connects the national, it's a national number. So it is. I was thinking listen and lean back to what Louise was saying, we need to be listening and we need to allow people who are in crisis to lean on the resources available. That's great. And yeah, I think it takes a village too. It's not just family. As LaRaine says, it's schools too. That's usually where the kids have the most interaction with adults and I think that just means again, training and awareness of what we should be looking out for and also making people feel, I think adults too, we're not alone in this struggle. So often you hear that people have a great feeling of relief when they're able to talk to other people and share stories, you know, that they're not the only ones feeling inadequate or hopeless that we all can have, you know, hopefully we can all overcome and help others overcome. Yeah, yeah. Louise, you summed it up nicely, helping people overcome. On behalf of Think Tech Hawaii and it's time for a responsible change episode, I wanna thank you for being here, LaRaine, Rebecca, Louise, Sandra. In two weeks, you'll have Chuck Crumpton who will be back from vacation. It's been a pleasure to work with you this evening and we'll see you in two weeks, hopefully. Aloha. Aloha. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please click the like and subscribe button on YouTube. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Check out our website, thinktechawaii.com. Mahalo.