Keith A. Somers

Keith’s story empowers today’s youth who, on a daily basis, are struggling with crime, bullying, gangs, suicidal thoughts, depression, and other harmful/anti-social behavior. Researchers note that bullying escalates in the later years of elementary school, peaks in middle school, and then dissipates by high school. They also note that 6th grade is the worst year for bullying.

Bullying

Academically gifted students, especially those with high verbal aptitude, are often bullied and are more likely than less gifted students to suffer emotionally. In 2007, the five worst states for bullying in kindergarten through 12th grade were (1) California, (2) New York, (3) Illinois, (4) Pennsylvania, and (5) Washington.

Every day, 160,000 students skip school because they are afraid they will be bullied. Thirty percent of students who say they have been bullied said they sometimes had brought weapons to school. While teachers say they intervened 71% of the time in bullying incidents, students report that teachers intervened only 25% of the time.

Leading up to this incident was the devastating Columbine High School massacre (often known simply as Columbine), where two senior students, Eric Harris and Dyland Klebold. The two students involved were described as gifted students who had been bullied for years.

These two unhappy students embarked on a shooting spree in which a total of 12 students and one teacher were murdered. They also injured 21 other students directly, with three further people being injured while attempting to escape the school. The pair then committed suicide. It is the fourth-deadliest school massacre in United States history, after the 1927 Bath School disaster Bath School disaster, 2007 Virginia Tech massacre and the 1966 University of Texas massacre, and remains the deadliest for an American high school.

These and so many other senseless crimes can be preventing when youth are exposed more positive processing to help change their outlook on life.

Suicide:

Suicide is the third leading cause of death among adolescents, accounting for a greater number of deaths than the next seven leading causes of death combined for 15- to 24-year-olds (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2006a). Almost 1 in 12 adolescents in high school made a suicide attempt, and 17% of adolescents seriously considered making a suicide attempt, in the calendar year 2005 (CDC, 2006). Nonetheless, there are differences among ethnic groups in the rates and contexts within which adolescent suicidal behaviors occur.

Risk factors for suicide among the young include suicidal thoughts, psychiatric disorders (such as depression, impulsive aggressive behavior, bipolar disorder, certain anxiety disorders), drug and/or alcohol abuse and previous suicide attempts, with the risk increased if there is situational stress and access to firearms.

Depression

Over 60 percent of all people who die by suicide suffer from major depression. If one includes alcoholics who are depressed, this figure rises to over 75 percent. Depression affects nearly 10 percent of Americans ages 18 and over in a given year, or more than 24 million people. More Americans suffer from depression than coronary heart disease (17 million), cancer (12 million) and HIV/AIDS (1 million).