What can be done about youth suicide? Starting in 2019 and culminating Jan. 12, 2021, with a documentary, 20 student journalists at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication set about answering that question, seeking to uncover workable solutions to what’s become an alarming public health crisis.
Students identified multiple factors linked to youth suicide, rooting out insights into prevention efforts that have worked.
The culmination of the project was a documentary that aired Jan. 12, 2021. That documentary is not included in this entry.
But most of the stories in the project were published in 2020, and the four best stories are included in this entry.
This entry is titled “Reporting on Youth Suicide in 2020” because it only includes the youth suicide stories published in 2020.
The students did research going into the project and know the dangers of copycat suicides. This project took a solutions journalism approach and looked at diverse efforts to prevent suicides. Here are more detailed descriptions:
“Hotline offers young people hope, chance to talk to peers” (Aug. 31, 2020) is about a teen hotline. When distressed teens call Teen Lifeline, a peer-to-peer crisis call center in the Phoenix area, it’s not an an adult health professional picking up the line but a teen their own age, a model experts consider the gold standard in youth crisis communications.
“Group brings moms, daughters together to boost mental health”(May 8, 2020) reports that among teens, Latinas face higher rates of attempted suicide. The reporters wrote about a Texas group that is trying to combat the problem by building resilience – helping mothers strengthen their bonds with their daughters.
“Researcher: Genetic screenings may increase suicide prevention” (Aug. 31, 2020) reports that for decades, researchers have looked to human genetics for linkages to mental illness. Patterns of inheritance are murky, but one researcher said it’s clear that it “runs in families.”
“COVID-19 highlights Arizona’s lack of mental health care providers” (Sept. 30,2020). The project’s funder, the Arizona Community Foundation, wants to fund community efforts to reduce youth suicide. This story clearly points to one big need in the community that funding could help.
Included in the PDFs and in the links is the overview to the whole project, which includes stories from 2019 and 2021, and a documentary that aired January 2021 so you could see the stories published in 2020 in context. Please disregard these supplemental items if they are not appropriate.
–Maureen West, Editor-in-residence and contest coordinator at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.