From the ground up

All the Iqaluit residents who took part in last Friday’s “walk for life” deserve praise, not only for drawing attention to the curse of youth suicide, but for showing youth that there’s a better way.

The parents, teachers, young people and other residents who marched along the Ring Road and then gathered at Nakasuk School to hold hands and form a circle also showed us something else — suicide is a preventable cause of death that cannot be fought only by governments.

Governments certainly have an essential role to play. Only governments have the means to provide professional mental health services, expensive multimedia information campaigns, and research efforts aimed at gathering statistics and other vital sources of knowledge.

To that end, at least some of the new federal money that Prime Minister Paul Martin announced this week for the creation of a national aboriginal youth suicide strategy will likely find its way to the Government of Nunavut.

But governments alone cannot do the job. In the end, the top-down work of governments cannot — by itself — prevent the occurrence of suicide. To be successful, suicide prevention must start from the ground up, within communities and families.

When communities are willing to do this kind of work, the best thing governments can do is to offer encouragement — then get out of the way and let communities get on with it.

Young people need to know that sadness is always temporary — and that with all its wonder and delight, there is no substitute for life. JB