Teens and Suicide

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REPORTER: Suicide is the second leading cause of death among teenagers after traffic accidents. The CDC says about 4,600 young lives are lost a suicide each year. The past week, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued new guidelines to help doctors identify at-risk patients and urge doctors to screen patients for suicidal thoughts. We spoke with four young adults who have been battling anxiety and depression, including one woman who survived several suicide attempts.

WOMAN 1: It's this feeling of being completely trapped in your own body.

MAN 1: You literally feel like you are losing your mind.

MAN 2: I don't know, sort of like a weird funk.

MAN 1: Anxiety and depression, unfortunately, is something I've always struggled with.

WOMAN 1: I had my first panic attack when I was 13.

WOMAN 2: I first tried to end my life when I was 11 years old.

MAN 2: And I just wanted to think about how bad I felt my life was.

WOMAN 2: I tried to end my life by overdosing on anything I could find in the medicine cabinet.

MAN 2: I had kind of lost my faith.

WOMAN 1: I didn't know what other way of escaping this other than to die.

WOMAN 2: And so at eight I wrote in my diary that my life was over.

MAN 1: Dreading the day that I would have to tell somebody that I was gay. You get taught about acting girlie as early as age four.

MAN 2: Throughout history, I mean as a human society, we haven't handled mental issues very well.

WOMAN 1: I actually have quite a few friends and family members, immediate family members, who do not get it.

MAN 2: It's seen as a mental sort of malady.

WOMAN 1: Oh, she has anxiety and depression. And it's like, no, I have anxiety and depression the same way a person has hypoglycemia or diabetes or anything else.

WOMAN 2: So it's been 10 years since I last attempted to end my life. And I'm thinking about how I might have changed mentally, and I've found ways to cope.

WOMAN 1: The therapy aspect of it is huge. And I have made improvements.

MAN 1: I'm on antidepressants, you know, and they're good for me. They help me. If I weren't on them, I would be back to being suicidal.

MAN 2: I decided that I would try my best not to try and let life affect how my mood felt.

WOMAN 1: It's still—there's still a lot of work to be done. I'm not able to keep up with everybody else sometimes, and that's OK.

MAN 1: I don't enjoy feeling negative emotions, but I welcome them because I know they're a part of life and they're part of who I am. So I let me feel those emotions to the fullest extent, and then I move on from it.

WOMAN 2: I think that has also given me more of a desire to continue living, that there is something to live for and that there is a meaning to my life. And that there is a reason why I didn't complete any of those attempts.

REPORTER: The brave faces and the voices of an epidemic.