According to the Centers for Disease Control, suicide is the second leading cause of death for ages 10 – 24. More teenagers and young adults die from suicide than from cancer, heart disease, AIDS, birth defects, stroke, pneumonia, flu and chronic lung diseases combined.
Every day in the United States, there are an average of 5,240 suicide attempts by young people in grades 7 – 12. Georgia and Douglas County are not exempt.
According to the Georgia Student Health Survey given to teens during the 2015 – 2016 school year, more than 27,000 young people said they had attempted suicide at least once in the previous year.
In an effort to let these young people and parents know that ‘being not OK is OK’, dctv23 is dedicating its current episode of the ‘focus’ roundtable to teen suicide prevention. ‘focus’ airs daily at 2 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Comcast channel 23 and AT&T U-verse channel 99 with simulcast on www.CelebrateDouglasCounty.com.
Douglas County Communications Director Wes Tallon hosts the roundtable discussion and is joined by Licensed Professional Counselors Deb Price, Meagan Thompson and Brian Gibson from Willowbrooke at Tanner, a behavioral health facility in Villa Rica that provides mental health services.
The roundtable includes discussion of the Netflix series ’13 Reasons Why’, symptoms that parents and friends should notice, and how to access help.
This episode of ‘focus’ will air through the end of September, and is also downloadable from www.dctv23.com.
