The sentence most parents cannot say
The 10th of September is World Suicide Prevention Day. This year’s theme is Changing the Narrative on Suicide — moving from silence and stigma towards openness and support.
I want to bring that theme down from the level of policy to the level of a kitchen.
Because the narrative that most needs changing is not in a government strategy. It is in the pause a parent takes before they decide not to ask.
Almost every parent I have worked with has felt the fear underneath that pause: if I raise it, I might put the idea in their head.
You won’t.
Asking a young person directly about thoughts of suicide does not create those thoughts, and it does not increase risk. This is one of the most consistent findings in prevention work, and organisations like Samaritans and Papyrus say it plainly. What asking does is something else entirely. It tells a young person that this subject can be said out loud in your house without the roof coming off.
That is not a small thing. For many young people, it is the entire question.
What silence teaches
I have worked as a registered mental health nurse. I have sat with families in rooms I will not describe. And in all of that, I have never seen silence protect a child.
Silence is not neutral. It teaches.
It teaches that some feelings are too big for this house. That there are things which, if said, would break the person you love most. And a child who has learned that will do something very predictable: they will take their inner life somewhere it feels safer.
In the model I use with families — the Communication Cascade™ — that stage is called Migration. It comes after Invalidation, Suppression and Withdrawal, and before Severance. It is the point at which a young person stops bringing what they are carrying to you and starts bringing it elsewhere. Often to a screen. Often to people you have never met and cannot assess.
I want to be careful here, because this is exactly the kind of point that gets flattened into something false. A phone does not cause suicide. Nothing single-handedly causes suicide; it is always a convergence of many things, and any story that offers one clean reason is a story that misleads. What I am saying is narrower and better supported by ordinary experience: when the channel home closes, distress goes somewhere. Our job is to keep the channel open, not to police every destination.
Warning signs worth knowing
Not a checklist to diagnose with. A set of things worth taking seriously enough to ask about.
- A change in how much they are sleeping, in either direction, that lasts beyond a bad week
- Withdrawal from things they used to care about — a sport, a friendship group, a game
- Talking about being a burden, or about people being better off
- Giving away things that matter to them
- A sudden, unexplained calm after a long stretch of visible distress
- Increased secrecy that feels different in quality from ordinary teenage privacy
- Any direct or indirect reference to not being here
You are not looking for certainty. You are looking for a reason to ask, and almost anything on that list is reason enough.
How to ask
Pick a moment where you are side by side, not face to face. In a car. Washing up. On a walk. Direct eye contact raises the stakes for a young person who is already frightened of your reaction. A shared task lowers them.
Use the actual words. Not “is everything alright?” Not a hint you hope they pick up. Say it: Are you having thoughts of ending your life? Vague questions give a young person permission to give you a vague answer, and most of them will take it — usually to protect you.
Then be quiet. This is the hardest part and the most important. Do not fill the silence, do not soften the question, do not add a second question on top of the first. Let it sit. The answer often arrives several seconds after most of us would have moved on.
Do not react to the answer with fear. If the answer is yes, your face is the first piece of information they receive about whether telling you was safe. You will feel frightened. Try to let the fear arrive after the conversation rather than during it.
What to do with a yes
You do not need a solution ready. You are not expected to be a clinician, and this is not a problem to be solved in one evening.
What is needed is smaller and firmer than that:
Stay. Do not leave them alone while you go and think. Presence is doing more work than anything you could say.
Take it entirely seriously. Do not test it, negotiate it, or reassure it away. Do not ask them to promise you anything.
Get professional help the same day. Their GP, a crisis line, or emergency services if the danger is immediate. Go with them. Make the call together if they will let you.
Ask what would make tonight safer, and act on the answer, whatever it is.
Tell one other adult. You should not carry this by yourself, and you will not do this well if you are alone with it.
Changing the narrative in your house
The theme this year asks us to shift from silence to openness. That shift does not happen at conferences. It happens the first time a young person says something enormous and watches an adult stay standing.
You can be that adult on Thursday. You do not need training, and you do not need the right words. You need to ask a plain question and then hold still.
They will remember that you asked long after they have forgotten what you said.
If you are worried about a young person or about yourself, please reach out today.
- Nigeria — SURPIN: 0800 078 7746
- UK — Samaritans: 116 123
- US — 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: 988
- Canada — 988
You do not have to be certain to call. You only have to be worried.
Latifah Ajetunmobi is a certified parent and teen coach and a registered nurse, midwife and mental health nurse. She is the author of The Phone-Free Teenager.