Cooper: Telling teens, 'you matter'

If there is a suicide involving a student who attends a Chattanooga area high school, as there have been at least a handful of times this school year (including one in the past week), Dean Sikes has likely heard about it or received a call about it.

The Chattanooga resident who attended McCallie School and graduated from Boyd-Buchanan School has been speaking to young people for 25 years and has been focused on hopelessness within the generation since 2012.

Sikes, 51, has spoken at more than 3,000 events and to more than 2.3 million students worldwide in the past quarter century and today centers his message on what he calls the You Matter campaign.

The impression he tries to leave with audiences, he said, is "no matter how dark it is, where there is life there is hope." He tells them, further, they were created as an original, they were created for a purpose and they were created for relationships.

With suicide the No. 3 killer of teenagers today, Sikes' message and ones like it are vital not only for the students who might be considering such a drastic step but also for parents, school administrators and teachers, and the friends of those teens who may no longer consider their lives worth living.

When he began his outreach 25 years ago, he said, "it was a totally different world. Suicide was nowhere on our radar screen."

What's changed, Sikes said, is the prevalence of bullying. And a major culprit of that, he said, is social media, which he terms "the greatest friend" of teens and their "No. 1 enemy."

A bullied teen, he said, falls into "a sense of hopelessness" and believes "it wouldn't matter if I was here." He tries to tell them "that God didn't make a mistake" in creating them, that they need to "discover what their purpose is" and not to give up because "you really do matter."

Sikes said it's not that teens are getting a sense that they don't matter from their parents, but for a variety of reasons they feel like they have to "try to grow up so fast." Plus, previous generations didn't have the internet, he said. "It's a phenomenal tool, but it has to be managed" in a way where teens don't feel their value is in how many [Facebook] friends they have or how many tweets they get. Life must be measured "on whose you are."

Because families are so busy, he said, many "interactive relational moments in life" do not happen. Open communication permits progress, he said. Parents should "communicate with [teens], be relatable, be in a place where kids can come to you. If you're a safe place to hear bad news, you're doing your job right. They're going to talk to someone." If parents aren't the ones they can talk to, they'll talk to their peers, who "don't have the life experience" to deal with what are sometimes very serious matters.

Certainly, one of those matters is suicide. Sikes said many parents never see it coming, but he said even if a teen has talked about the subject, parents better take it seriously. Mental health, he said, "is just as important as physical health."

The same is true for school teachers, administrators and friends of the teenager who is merely talking of suicide.

Teachers and administrators should keep the lines of communication open, Sikes said, and let students know that no matter how bad a situation seems, "nothing is so bad that death is a better choice." They should never underestimate the power of just listening, he said.

Friends should take any voicing of suicidal thoughts seriously and tell an adult. The one voicing the threat may not appreciate it at the moment but will thank the friend later. Much more consequential, he said, is the friend who can look back and say the warning was there but he or she took no action.

With more than 145 events per year, Sikes has had some unforgettably poignant moments. One was a 14-year-old girl who waited until after all those who wanted to talk to him had left and engaged him in conversation. At one point, she pulled up her sleeves to show him all the times she'd cut herself.

"I hurt myself," she said, "to stop the pain."

Then she pulled a blood-stained razor blade out of her purse and gave it to him, having decided from what she heard from Sikes to give up the practice. Now, in each of his presentations, he pulls the razor blade out of a bag and tells the story of the young girl.

"I'm just trying to awaken the conversation," he said, "that says your life matters. That no matter how much it hurts, your life matters."

As much as he might want to, Sikes can't reach every teen, but friends, parents and teachers can help by being vigilant, by listening and by telling those with whom they interact that they matter. It may be the most important conversation they have any day.