According to the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, suicide is the second-leading cause of death for North Carolinians between 10 and 18. Youth reporter Tanya Wang saw this statistic, and she wanted to know how the state and local community were working to provide more preventative resources for young people.
Throughout the course of Tanya's reporting, she attended Carolina Across 100's Suicide Prevention Summit at UNC-Chapel Hill, interviewed UNC Research Instructor Natalie O'Brien about suicide prevention and support efforts, and talked to a suicide survivor at the outpatient facility he says helped him turn his life around.
Our youth mentor Chris Williams worked directly with Tanya on her story. He helped her create a non-narrative piece that centers the voices of those directly impacted. He sat down with WUNC's Youth reporting director, Kamaya Truitt, to talk about the reporting process.
This interview transcript has been modified for clarity and brevity.
On June 13, 2024, youth reporters Tanya Wang and Chris Williams attended Carolina Across 100's Suicide Prevention Summit at the Friday Center in Chapel Hill. They met a variety of organizations' representatives who all served a unique purpose, including someone from Bright Path Behavioral Health in Wake Forest. This ended up being the perfect connection, as someone they had helped work through struggles with suicidal ideation in the past was eager to share their story now. Tanya got the chance to talk to him as he showed her around the quiet, bright halls of Bright Path, which looked more like a school than an outpatient mental health facility.
"My name is Carter Suffridge, I'm 19 years old, I'm from Raleigh, and I'm going to UNCG."
"In 2021 I was 16 years old. … I started to have a lot of stress and anxiety which turned into depression, which led me on a hard journey of battling that and not really ever fixing the problem of how it happened."
"Some of the biggest challenges I faced was just like, you know, staying out of trouble and making good decisions, as well as like, keeping up with my grades in the classroom. And even just like being able to connect with other students on a level of what you should be able to.
"It definitely affected my relationship with my parents, and even my family, a lot of like, self isolating, and also with my parents, like just pushing back on them. And then as well as like, being not being able to be healthy in relationship with my peers. That definitely made that a lot. Very hard.
"It's something that I struggled a lot with, and just dealing with those thoughts of harming myself and even committing suicide was something that I struggled a lot with for a very long time. I think at one point I took a whole bottle of melatonin just you know, hoping that you know, I would go to sleep and not wake up.
Kamaya Truitt: "So that was a really heavy moment to navigate through. I know that Carter approached you all, but how did you all build the trust to create a space where he felt comfortable sharing his authentic experience?"
Chris Williams: "I have to give Tanya a lot of the credit for that, because Tanya is the one that conducted the interview. I would jump in with a couple follow ups, but Tanya is the one she talked to him for a long time. And I remember it was something similar that she did when she was talking to Jasmine too, but like, he would say something kind of about his struggle, and she'd be like, Yeah, I knew. Somebody else who had this type of problem, and just making sure that you were really listening.
"We were talking to him before we even mic'd him up, because we were like, We're sitting here getting your story. We don't want to just use you as the poster child and basically put you as another statistic, like we were just talking about with the CDC, like you already got through it, you had the valuable knowledge. So let's sit here, make you the person that you are, and let everybody hear your story for real."
Truitt: "I love that. I admire that. It's not something that you can teach. You could tell the care and intentionality that she was putting into her interview questions, and the way that she was thinking about who to reach out to, and how y'all also had the opportunity to visit Bright Path and meet a few folks who were integral in Carter's healing journey. Who were they and what role did they play?"
Williams: "So one of the first ones you're going to hear in this clip; her name is Michelle Jones, and she's their education liaison. The other person we talked to was Abigail Krieck. She's the clinical outreach specialist. So when we got there, she gave us a tour of the facility."
Michelle Jones: "Hey Carter! Nice to see you again? You doing good-ohhh you ready!"
Abigail Krieck: "I'm Abigail Krieck and I'm the clinical outreach specialist. Our kids are with us Monday through Friday, nine to three. So it's just the same as school times."
Carter Suffridge: "She worked with me."
Krieck: "Our groups are not what people think of as sitting around in a circle and talking about your feelings. This is classroom style, lecture information. We're teaching you about your emotions. What are myths behind emotions? How to identify emotions. We're talking about skills. How do I handle when I'm stressed."
Suffridge: "This is, um, there were times in the day where you would have, like, one on one therapy here, so you would go with your therapist into their room, and it was great. I loved going home and sleeping in my own bed. So they give you a little card before you leave. And this is, like, one thing you get to choose what you do and what you're going to work on for the day."
Jones: "He wanted to, we just had to pull it out of him, and I knew he had a lot of potential."
Suffridge: "It sounds cliche, but mental health is and healing journey is definitely a roller coaster. I still have days where it's like, I just feel like I don't feel good, I don't feel good about myself. Today might be a bad day, but that's okay. Nobody's gonna, nothing's gonna ever be perfect, you know?"
Jones: "He took it in stride it was a struggle. It wasn't easy but, you know what?"
Suffridge: "I've been told I'd have a powerful voice, and now that I am where I am from my journey, I feel like it's my job to, you know, be able to speak out about these things and be able to help the community."
Truitt: "This was a relatively large story to condense into just a four minute piece. What do you hope the impact is of the story when folks listen to it?"
Williams: "I hope that hearing somebody who got over it, it makes people not see them as a lost cause, once they start saying, 'hey, I'm struggling with this,' and not say, 'oh, he's crazy, she's crazy. There's nothing I can do for him. Let somebody else handle it.
"It doesn't mean you automatically have to go to a mental hospital. It doesn't even mean that you necessarily veered super far off from having a healthy mental state, it just means something probably got too much for you to handle by yourself, and you need somebody to help guide you back onto that path, just like Carter was saying."
