{"id":2280,"date":"2022-05-06T12:00:18","date_gmt":"2022-05-06T12:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2022\/05\/06\/gaining-trust-to-write-about-the-rise-in-child-suicide\/"},"modified":"2024-10-29T20:09:14","modified_gmt":"2024-10-29T20:09:14","slug":"gaining-trust-to-write-about-the-rise-in-child-suicide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2022\/05\/06\/gaining-trust-to-write-about-the-rise-in-child-suicide\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing about the unthinkable pain of child suicides"},"content":{"rendered":" \n
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The subjects that draw author, lecturer and essayist Andrew Solomon<\/a> are never easy or light: Racial bias, gender and sexual identity, the changing definitions of family and, perhaps most notably, mental health. His 2012 book \u201cFar From the Tree,\u201d<\/a> which illuminated the stories of families raising special-needs children, has been translated into more than 10 languages and honored with an array of awards from around the globe, among them the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. His deeply reported memoir, \u201cThe Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression,\u201d<\/a> has been published in two dozen languages; it won the 2001 National Book Award for nonfiction and was a 2002 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Now, in an April piece for The New Yorker, Solomon brings us \u201cThe Mystifying Rise of Child Suicide,\u201d<\/a> a riveting, 10,000-word exploration of a reality that is almost unthinkable. As he states, in one simple and searing sentence:<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Children are often secretive about suicidal impulses; parents are often in denial.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The children we meet through Solomon are not the teens featured in coverage of social media bullying, but pre-teens, some barely old enough to start school:<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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As early as 1996, a review of research indicated that major depressive disorder appeared to be \u201coccurring at an earlier age in successive cohorts.\u201d Two studies on preschoolers suggest that around one per cent of them suffer from depression. Early-onset depression often persists.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The story blends a succession of shocking statistics and harrowing examples into a powerful, deeply unsettling picture of the mental pain in which some children live \u2015 and die. He finds several grieving families who want their stories told in hopes of helping others. Throughout, he follows the story of Trevor Matthews, who was in private elementary school with one of Solomon\u2019s sons. This from the opening of his story:<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Trevor was perhaps the brightest kid in the class. In first grade, he was already reading adult narrative nonfiction. He could be charming, generous, and humane. But he could also turn suddenly violent. At my son\u2019s seventh-birthday party, Trevor bit another boy on the ear so hard that the mark was still visible when that child next went to school. Trevor terrorized the smaller kids in the class, and, if they pushed back, he would try to get them in trouble. He was shrewd in his manipulations. In second grade, he tried extracting cash from other boys by threatening to spread embarrassing rumors.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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 <\/strong>Trevor\u2019s parents open their lives to Solomon in ways that are generous and painful. He, in turn, is transparent with readers about his relationship with the family and the subject.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Now, in an extensive interview with Storyboard, Solomon goes deeper on his reporting process, laying out how he found and gained trust from heartbroken parents and suicide survivors. He also talks about his fears for his own teenage children, and the toll such reporting takes on his own mental and emotional health.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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You\u2019ve written about depression and mental illness for so long, I wondered if anything in this latest story, about child suicides, really surprised you?
<\/strong>The whole story surprised me. The fact of the matter is that if you read about many forms of mental illness you can say, \u2018Well, I wouldn\u2019t have wanted to be depressed, but in being depressed, I learned an awful lot of things I could never have learned in any other way.\u2019 You can find strength and encouragement in the whole experience. But there\u2019s no upside to having your child die by suicide. There\u2019s no hidden lesson that makes you stronger and better. It\u2019s just devastating.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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\"Journalist
Andrew Solomon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div> \n
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Additionally, I was shocked at how confident these children were, and how young \u2014 as young as 5. When I was 5, I didn\u2019t have a concept of suicide or understand that one could end one\u2019s own life. But even if I had understood that wanted to do it, I don\u2019t think I would have had the skill to carry it off.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The number of children who are suicidal is very underestimated. Lots of children don\u2019t have the ability to carry it off, but I was surprised at how early the feelings could be that intense \u2015 even in situations where there wasn\u2019t abuse, there wasn\u2019t cruelty, there wasn\u2019t anything. As a parent one always wants to believe that love will carry the day. But the reality I discovered is that, while love certainly can be very helpful, and children who come from abusive homes are more likely to kill themselves than children who come from loving homes, even with little children, love is not an adequate medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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How long did the reporting and writing take for this story?
<\/strong>Almost exactly a year.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Can you describe how you went about approaching the parents of children who had taken their own lives? One of the skills reporters are expected to develop is this ability to persuade people to talk on the record, but I suspect this was a different situation.
<\/strong>The family at the center of the piece are the family of a classmate of my son\u2019s. As I spent time with them in the period just following the loss of their child, I said, \u2018Look, you have an extraordinary story. I\u2019m not gunning for anything.\u2019 They kept saying they wanted to help other children and spare other families what they were going through. I said, \u2018If you\u2019d like me to write something, I certainly am willing to do so.\u2019 And they said that they would like that and so that was kind of by mutual agreement.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Then I found the secondary family in the story, which was the family of Seven Bridges (the child\u2019s name). I had interviewed Michael Lindsey at NYU, who has been working for a long time on the issue of Black suicide. I asked if there anyone he thought might talk to me and he agreed to call around and ask. The two young women who talked about their suicide attempts had both been involved with a film produced by the Jed Foundation (a non-profit organization dedicated to preventing suicides by teens and young adults).<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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So it was a variety of approaches but they were mostly approaches by someone whom the subject I was approaching trusted.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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It sounds like you didn\u2019t try to persuade anyone to speak to you. You just offered\u2026
<\/strong>Yes, even the family that\u2019s briefly quoted from Albuquerque, their children had gone to school with the children of friends of mine. Most parents who have lost children to suicide tend either in the direction of feeling deeply ashamed and wanting to keep the story extremely secret, or in the direction of feeling like the lack of open discussion about children\u2019s mental health is part of what led their children to die, and they find a sense of purpose in talking about what their children have been through.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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My experience is that teenagers can be difficult to interview on subjects much less sensitive than this one. Was it difficult to get the teenagers to talk?
<\/strong>Actually it wasn\u2019t. The two primary teenagers had already done some speaking about their situation. They hadn\u2019t talked about some of the details that we talked about so I got at some other things beyond what was out there, but the filmmaker had connected me to them and they were quite forthcoming.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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We talked on a Zoom interview that I did with both of them at the same time.That format had been proposed by the filmmaker, and I had started off thinking, \u2018Hmm, do I really want to do it that way? It\u2019s a little weird interviewing them together.\u2019 But each of them was encouraged by how much the other was saying. Over the course of our interview each grew more vocal and had more to say and was saying it to me, but they were also saying it to each other. They\u2019ve actually become rather good friends with each other through the process initially of making the film, but also through that conversation that we had.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I like to think that I\u2019m good at interviewing people and drawing them out, but there is also that moral imperative that people are dealing with.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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It\u2019s been a controversial practice in journalism, but I wondered if you let people to see the story or parts of the story before it was finished?
<\/strong>The New Yorker does not encourage that. Well, more than does not encourage; it doesn\u2019t really let you show stories when they\u2019re in progress. But the fact-checking is so unbelievably thorough that people really know everything you\u2019re saying about them before the story comes out. And there\u2019s a deliberate policy also in fact-checking of saying anything that may be upsetting or difficult for the people you\u2019re talking to. The idea is for nobody to feel ambushed on the day the story goes into print.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Are there any other things that you do to reassure sources when they agree to tell stories this emotionally difficult?
<\/strong>I recounted in the story itself having said to Tami Charles (mother of a 10-year-old boy lost to suicide), \u2018Don\u2019t worry I\u2019ll be as nice as I can be,\u2019 and her response being, \u2018This is not a nice subject. If you\u2019re really going to write this article, you cannot be nice.\u2019 So I think I said to people that the point was to write a sympathetic story, and it wasn\u2019t to catch them out, or seduce and betray them. But they had to want to tell the story. On other subjects that I\u2019ve written about, with sources I\u2019ll say, \u2018Come on. I\u2019ll do it this way. What if I agree to that?\u2019 There can be a kind of negotiation. Here, I felt like the subject matter is too sensitive and I\u2019m only going to write about people who want to be written about.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I was intrigued by your description of Trevor Matthews. I don\u2019t think that I\u2019ve ever seen as nuanced a portrait of a childhood bully. In fact, it was a shock to me that a bully would have experienced so much depression. Was that something that surprised you?
<\/strong>It absolutely was. I had no idea before Trevor died that he was in that kind of mental anguish. I thought of him as someone who inflicted mental anguish. I thought that the bullying behavior was cruel and maybe even psychopathic rather than recognizing it as despairing and desperate. So I was so shocked as I read the statistics: While suicide is highly correlated with bullying, it\u2019s just as highly correlated for bullies as for victims of bullying. As somebody said to me, \u2018It\u2019s a very simple principle,\u2019 but it had never crossed my mind before. Bullies are not very happy people. They\u2019re socially isolated. They\u2019re unpopular. People don\u2019t want to be with them and so on. If Trevor had not been so bullying, the fact that he was brilliant and could be charismatic would have made him a super-popular kid. But his treating other people the way he did had the reverse effect. The tendency of bullies to be desperate was one of the real revelations.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I thought that the bullying behavior was cruel and maybe even psychopathic rather than recognizing it as despairing and desperate.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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You\u2019d done so much interviewing and reporting; was it hard to structure the piece?
<\/strong>It was unbelievably hard. The first draft was 180 pages long \u2014nearly a book. And I will ultimately write a book based on it. But I just had to get all of the material down before I could begin to organize it. And then I had to organize it before I could figure out what was expendable and what was absolutely essential to the story. I did work with my editor on that. He asked to see all of what I\u2019d written and I gave it to him and then proceeded to discuss with him what was and was not crucial. I\u2019d been so in the weeds with this material for such a long time that it was sometimes difficult for me to have the perspective that you could tell the story you wanted to tell and not use this statistic, or not use that anecdote, or not use this character.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Just checking: Your first draft was 180 pages long?
<\/strong>Yes. It wasn\u2019t a coherent piece that flowed from beginning to end. When I wrote up all the material, I had 180 pages of prose and then I had to begin to figure out what I really wanted to use.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Does it take a certain amount of courage to begin the writing process when you\u2019ve got something that long?
<\/strong>It\u2019s the way I\u2019ve tended to work. My last book was a thousand pages but the draft of it was slightly more than twice as long as the version that I published. I tend to write very long and then cut. Simpler subjects, I don\u2019t, but with this kind of subject, there\u2019s just so much material, there\u2019s so much emotion that has to be put down on the page before I can see what\u2019s crucial and what\u2019s expendable.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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 <\/strong>Did you start writing while you were still reporting?
<\/strong>I started writing before I\u2019d done all the interviews, but not right at the beginning. I did a lot of interviews and thought about them a lot, but didn\u2019t write anything. I would like to say it\u2019s because of my profound editorial genius, but it was actually partly because I was overwhelmed and trying to avoid the subject. Then as I started writing, I\u2019d think, \u2018Oh I really need X, or I really need Y. There isn\u2019t enough of this, or there\u2019s too much of that.  Or it isn\u2019t explained thoroughly enough.\u2019 So that was the process of getting to know the material.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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We don\u2019t talk about this much in journalism, but I wondered if when you are working on a piece like this one, you feel anxieties or fears?
<\/strong>Yes. There are two aspects to that in a piece like this. One of them, and a profound one, is that I\u2019m a father of youngish children, teenagers now, and I\u2019m aware that what I\u2019m looking at could become my own story. That\u2019s utterly terrifying. In addition to that, there\u2019s fear of my own emotional vulnerability. These stories are painful to write. The idea of even going back and rereading the transcripts of these conversations \u2014 it felt like living through an automobile accident every day. It was traumatic and sad.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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These stories are painful to write. The idea of even going back and rereading the transcripts of these conversations \u2014 it felt like living through an automobile accident every day.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I really would have loved to discover a guiding principle in which I could say, \u2018Terrible things happen to these families, but they\u2019ll never happen to me and they\u2019ll never happen to you. This is how you steer safe.\u2019 You know, I came up with a certain amount of wisdom that may be helpful to some people, but overall I felt like people are probably going to go on dying by suicide and there\u2019s nothing I can do to make that not happen to anyone.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Is it hard for you to keep your own emotions in check when you\u2019re doing these interviews? Do you even try?
<\/strong>Tami Charles had said to me while we were doing the interview that people tried to interview her, and then, as she told her story, they would start crying and she felt like she ended up having to take care of them. I wanted to avoid imposing unwelcome emotion on the people who I was talking to. That said, you can\u2019t talk about these topics in a tone of pure journalistic neutrality; it\u2019s always with a sense that you have to be emotionally engaged with the people you are talking to. It also just impossible to sit with a mother who\u2019s lost her child and not have an emotional response. So, it was a mixture of all of these things.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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You\u2019ve written a memoir of your own experiences, \u201cThe Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression.\u201d How did writing this story on child suicides affect your own mood? Are you able to separate the two, or is it sometimes a case where working on a certain story is almost unhealthy?
<\/strong>That\u2019s a good word for it, unhealthy. I definitely had days when I thought, \u2018I\u2019ll just do email today. I\u2019m not feeling emotionally up to doing the work on this story.\u2019 And the final fact-checking, edit process \u2014 even though I love my editor at The New Yorker and love working with him, I felt like I was having bamboo splinters stuck under my fingernails, to go back to everything, to go over those details, having to be on phone calls with people who have been interviewed, saying to them, \u2018You went through the trauma of telling me all of this once, now we have to go through it again because we have to make sure the facts are all correct.\u2019 It was an agonizing experience \u2015 a worthwhile but agonizing nonetheless. There were times when I thought, \u2018I\u2019ve dealt with depression. Am I going to get more depressed by doing this?\u2019<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The sort of celebratory feeling that you have when you finish an article, when you publish an article, I didn\u2019t have much feeling of celebration about this. I had feelings of intense anxiety.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I don\u2019t know if this is an accurate observation, but I wanted to ask about an uncomfortable theme that emerges in the story, that children have this ability to keep secrets, especially when it comes to their mood. Was that something that surprised you?
<\/strong>I grew up a gay person who was incredibly close to my parents and incredibly involved with my family but who nonetheless managed to keep the fact that I was gay a secret from them until I was 23 or 24 years old. I know that you can be incredibly, warmly attached to your parents and still be keeping a really significant and profound secret. So that didn\u2019t surprise me, but frightened me. I like to think that I\u2019m close to my children and I suddenly have to reckon that they could very well be keeping secrets like this.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I like to think that I\u2019m close to my children and I suddenly have to reckon that they could very well be keeping secrets like this.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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In some ways, the fear in writing this was not only that it would make me depressed, but that somehow with my children as I was writing this, it would make them think about suicide even though all of the evidence is that it helps children to talk to them about that issue.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I was excruciatingly anxious through the whole process. I just was aware as I looked at my children \u2015 we\u2019ve had cozy, snuggly, open times \u2015 I thought that they could be keeping a terrible secret. Not necessarily this particular secret but I did think in a more general sense, \u2018Oh, my children could be keeping terrible secrets from me.\u2019 That made me sad. I think if my children were troubled I could do as good a job as anyone could do of finding them the right care, of responding in the appropriate ways. But the possibility that they might be suffering terribly in ways that I don\u2019t know about \u2014 it was excruciating to come to that realization\u2026<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I do plan to write a book about this and just sold the idea to my publisher. Usually if you make a book sale, you feel exuberant. I made the book sale and I felt like, \u2018OK, I\u2019m doing this because I think there\u2019s a real need for it, and because I think I can do it reasonably well. But the idea that I\u2019m going to go talk to more families and plunge deeper into this material fills me with horror and dismay.\u2019 I had a sense that, \u2018OK, I\u2019ve made a commitment to this, so I need to do it and I think I can do it adequately well.\u2019<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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You asked about my mental health and I feel like these stories have more than the usual demands of having to persuade people to talk to you or organize material. In the middle of writing it, I would think, \u2018Ok, I need to write such and such a section,\u2019 and then I would check Facebook 11 times and look to see what the headlines were on nytimes.com and do 97 other avoidant things before I finally was able to sit down and force myself to write.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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***<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Mark Johnson<\/strong> is a health and science reporter for The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and author of the new climate apocalypse novel, \u201cThough The Earth Gives Way.\u201d<\/a> In 2011, he shared the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting with four colleagues at The Journal Sentinel.<\/em><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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