They are dying. Our youth are dying.

We are losing the war. We may be winning some battles, but we are losing the war.

Fighting for higher minimum wage is great. Fighting to ban bump stocks on guns is great. Fighting for pesticide disclosure and buffer zones is great. Fighting for paid family medical leave is great. Fighting for higher teacher pay is great. Fighting for equality for all is great.

You know what’s better? Hope. Hope is better. We are all fighting to make the future great for our kids, but our youth are feeling so hopeless that they are actively trying to die. Who exactly will benefit from all these changes we are trying to make if our youth are dead?

Whose job is it to bring hope to our youth? The president? State legislators? County councils?  Teachers? Doctors? Parents? Yes. All of them. But it’s also your job. Yours and mine.

In the last 30 days in my small community of south Kona, there has been a 14-year-old girl who slit her wrists, a 15-year-old boy who hung himself, a 12-year-old girl who took three bottles of pills, an 11-year-old girl who is experimenting with cutting and held a knife to her throat, and a 16-year-old boy who slit his wrists. They are all still alive by grace. But do you know that most of these five instances won’t be recorded anywhere because they didn’t die and not all were hospitalized.

How is it possible that we live in this world? What happened to hope? I feel like I woke up one day and all of a sudden 11-years-olds were killing themselves.

Smile. Hug. Share your stories. Talk about the future.

What can we do? Thanks for asking.

Government officials at all levels, I ask you to use your influence to talk about suicide, hope, brain health, reaching out for help, etc. Stop relegating this to “mental illness”  and thus absolving yourself by calling for more services. Newspapers and news shows will take your calls. Use your influence to save lives. Talk about it. Reduce the stigma.

Everybody else, I ask you to talk to our youth without a computerized device in your hand. Smile. Hug. Share your stories. Talk about the future. Help them find their purpose and passion. Tell them they are worth it and loved.

We can’t find solutions to a problem that we can’t name. Hopelessness is the disease, the infection. It did not become an epidemic overnight and it will take some time to bring hope back.

What will you do?

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