Teen Attempts Suicide

Police press relations officer Anel Innocent on Friday confirmed with the STAR that there has been an attempted suicide incident here in Saint Lucia. However due to the fact that the person involved is a minor, little information was divulged by the police. However the STAR has learnt that both local social services agencies and the police are working with the family of the individual involved.

The incident took place in the north of the island on Thursday and involves a fifteen year-old who was reportedly discovered hanging from a rope by her parents.  Whilst the teenager appeared distraught at the time, her condition is not life threatening.

In recent months there have been a number of reported cases of suicide here, as well as a number of unreported suicide attempts. In last weekend’s STAR an article by Rick Wayne asked the question: “why are Looshans killing themselves?” The STAR publisher went on to lament that “confronted by the recent spate of discombobulating suicides involving young victims, we’ve chosen to talk about the outrage only in terms vaguely clinical.

“You’d think someone from one of our wellness centers would by now have informed the nation about the various reasons people kill themselves, and how their relatives and friends might recognize the deadly signals, perchance to save a life, even their own,” Wayne wrote.  He then went on to point out that much has been written about why people take their own lives, the main cause being depression.
“More and more frequently… it seems the experts are agreeing that suicide is a consequence of  “depression,” Wayne stated. The article gave an assessment of the tough economic times and unemployment here as causal factors to depression which local authorities and the Government seem unable to respond to.