Introduction
This case involves the sudden suicide of a young girl in an Australian school. Among the parties affected are school staff, friends, teachers, students and parents. They have many questions regarding why a young girl with a wonderful future would end up ending her life?
They also feel great stress and need support from a therapist who is able to help them cope with this situation and their negative emotions as “the role of emotion in self-preservation is a central theme for all the survivors of complex trauma” (Wastell, 2005).
As such, the needs of each individual should be addressed carefully, as well as the needs of the community as the whole. The school community involving all the parties mentioned above is the main client to this case study.
The school staff is devastated by the fact that they may live to see another’s loss. It should be noted that they take care of the students and what happened to Anne could actually happen to another student. There is going to be lack of trust, especially from parents.
When a child is in high school, the community believes that the parents pay school fees, and the teachers are the source of knowledge, and the staff members babysit the students, yet with such a ‘fine’ system a child ends up committing suicide.
Moreover, the problems Anne went through were not addressed by the staff so the community will ultimately attack them, thus the staff will have to be more careful, next time they will need to have a watchful eye on the students. They should also interact socially so that a child suffering from a problem can entrust it to somebody so close to them like the janitor, unlike teachers who may exhibit fear, school staff does not.
The teachers also have a very big burden, being the main providers of knowledge, the society expects them to understand psychological needs of the students. They should be able to read into a child’s mind and tell what he or she is going through.
On the same note, they should be in a position to talk to the child and when they cannot handle the problem they forward the student to the school canceller who may take away the child’s burden. A student spends most of his/her time with the teacher not the parent and the staff, so its upon the teacher to take extra cushion in regard to what goes on in the mind of a student.
Friends are the people closest to us and if they cannot tell when we are experiencing depression and stress then who can? Thus they are also to be blamed when a person decides to commit suicide. Whereas it takes long for an experienced shrink to get to know the secrets of a patient, a friend lives everyday experiencing these secret truths.
In case of Anne, she had informed those closest to her that she needed time alone, if only one of the friends intervened by either talking to her or reporting the matter to somebody else, this child’s life would probably have been saved.
Considering other students: desk mates, team mates, locker mates, Anne was with them all through; when she was developing acne they were there, when she missed classes or team practice they noted yet they didn’t do much. It is the responsibility of every party in a school to know what goes on with their mates or neighbors.
The parents are responsible for their kids, they bring them to the world and they are the same people who pay for the school fees. When a child dies they mourn, even though everybody else in the community joins in, the hit is more direct to them than any other party.
So the question is, where were the parents when Anne was taking a break from home and from school? They should have investigated, sat her down and probably Anne would still be breathing today.
Every party involved deserves to know about this death and everybody should blame themselves for the loss of a member of the society. More emphasis should be put on the psychological incidence that led to a young girl not to communicate with parents or friends, but rather chose to end the pain and end herself with it.
At the same time, everybody should ask themselves, what if there is another Anne out there who has not yet committed suicide but is going through the same problems.
Its important to evaluate the community in both individual and community needs and the best method I would use is first of all identifying the community and individual objectives.
Mainly students objectives would be to pass exams and gain knowledge, the parents’ objectives would be to make their sons and daughters responsible members of the society, and they would aim at making their kids better than themselves. Teachers, on the other hand, would work at improving the discipline and knowledge as well as understanding to the students.
Best people to assist me in this would include youths and the students, because this is the generation that highly suffers from chronic suicide. However, in order to achieve stable results, sampling would be done using proper criterion so that everybody is properly and completely represented.
People carrying out the research would have to be trained on the following areas: how to handle the respondents, they must be aware that not everybody responds positively, they have to be patient with the respondents and must not be involved in directing the respondent’s answers to various topics.
Of course, this will go hand in hand with the selection of the people to carry out the research. People involved in community should not be part of the group. Furthermore, the group carrying out interviews must learn the art of reading minds as mostly in interviews people do not always respond truthfully, they sometimes exaggerate. They must be also trained on whom to pass the questionnaires to.
When it comes to public meetings administrators will have to be involved so that they may make the community aware of the seriousness of the meeting and the need for such a gathering all in the name of eradicating social evils.
A traumatized society presents a million challenges, “while for the victim pain and suffering end with death, for the loved ones left behind they are just beginning. These surviving family, friend, and co-workers can be referred as “co-victims” (Herman 1999) When a child commits suicide the society comes up with all sorts of blame. The blame game is directed on all members of the society.
According to Herman (1999), “in our society, it is common for the sorrow that follows death to be hidden behind the closed doors of the family unit or as memories within a person’s mind”. The community members point fingers to each other. Among the most prevalent problems are denial, lack of response, financial challenges and hopelessness.
Denial is a situation of not taking responsibility and not accepting the present problem; for instance it would take time for teachers to feel that they played a role in making a young girl go to an extent of committing the worst crime anybody can do.
According to them, she was responsible for her own life, but was she? Being a minor she was under the society’s care. Even when public meetings are held and such sentiments are presented they would still meet a very strong resistance.
A traumatized society tends to live in the past. The members just focus on better times that had been there before the current events occurred, for instance, when Nagasaki in Japan was bombed, the people were not quick to going back to their duties.
We get a situation where elders of the society talk of a time when no child would think of committing suicide. “Avoiding the traumatic memories leads to stagnation in the recovery process, while approaching them too precipitately leads to a fruitless and damaging reliving of the trauma” (Heman, 1999).
When the teens hear of such talks, they feel like they are the ones to be blamed for all current society evils, it thus becomes so hard to convince the people to forget the past and think of a better tomorrow.
It should also be noted that people under trauma mostly don’t respond and when they do, negative responses are more prevalent. There are cases where people have tore questionnaires and other cases a public meeting has been held only to have the hosts attend.
But the biggest challenge is to bring about the idea that there is hope, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. People are not ready to believe in this when a young girl commits suicide. “In such a situation, the therapist plays a role of a witness and ally, in whose presence the survivor can speak of the unspeakable” (Herman 1999).
People’s age, culture and religion are significant factors in dealing with healing of a society. The fact that Anne committed suicide should not be blamed on her age, religion or social status; the point is that something went wrong, the members of the society did not do their work, and Anne was also to be blamed as she did not open up.
Anne’s family should understand that it was not their fault that their daughter or sibling decided to commit the suicide. They should rather focus on a future and hope no other is forced by circumstances to make the same choice as Anne. “The therapist plays a role of a witness and ally, in whose presence the survivor can speak of the unspeakable” (Herman 1999).
Memorials in the school should be held every year to remember what happened to Anne. Anne was good in class she had people who loved her and team mates who cared for her, her life is worth remembering. Suicide should not be judged on her.
The main long-term goal for all this is to prevent the occurrence of teenage suicide and more so to make the society aware of its youths’ problems because at the end of it, we are all affected. What is more important at the time just after the suicide committed is to help other students, teachers and parent to “get over it”.
In this case, “goal-setting should be concrete and reassuring method of stress reduction during a chaotic aftermath of a sudden death” (Clements, DeRanieri, Vigil & Benasutti 2004). The therapist should guide the clients along the way of “adaptive coping”.
It is important to know that this early stage is the most painful and the therapist should be very careful and attentive to each client.
What is important for the therapist it to make sure that none of the survivors is left behind and feels lonely. The therapist should provide support at any type. As the therapy continues, the therapist should encourage survivors to share their needs and accept help form other supporters.
Reference List
Clement, PT, DeRanieri, JT, Vigil, GJ, Benasutti, M, 2004, ‘Life after Death: Grief Therapy after the Suddden Traumatic Death of a Family Member’, Perspectives in Psychiatric Care, Vol. 40, No. 4. pp. 149-154.
Herman, T, 1999, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence–From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, Basic Books, London.
Wastell, C., 2005, ‘Understanding Trauma and Emotion’ in The Trauma Therapist and Their Emotions, Allen and Unwind, Sydney.