Suicide prevention begins in early childhood
Megan Strickland
Salish Kootenai College Professor Jack Wright explains the impact of early childhood development on impulse control.
Hey savvy news reader! Thanks for choosing local.
You are now reading
1 of 3 free articles.
LAKE COUNTY – Creeping sadness and the despair of depression are common emotions that can turn deadly and lead to suicide in people with a poor ability to control impulse urges or tap into feelings of happiness or self-worth.
Simple steps taken by caregivers in early childhood to ensure self-worth, impulse control, and meaningfulness can lead to increased chances of happiness and capability to deal with negative thoughts, Salish Kootenai College Psychology Professor Jack Wright explained at the January Partners in Suicide and Prevention meeting.
Some of the ideas may go against engrained societal norms, Wright said.
Take for instance, the habit of punishing children for wrongdoing at an early age.
“Age 3 to 5, often our parents are punishing us,” Wright said.
“Psychologists say punishment is out. O-U-T, out, damaging. Harsh voices: damaging. We’ve all had them. Eighty-four percent of parents believed in spanking, not just harsh voices, 10 years ago.”
Punishment is a result of being judgmental.
“We’re judging that that 4-year-old or 5-year-old knew better,” Wright said. “We’ve even told them that ‘You knew better.’ Well if they knew better then why did they do it again?”
Scientific data shows that the pre-frontal cortex of the brain that processes consequences doesn’t fully develop until age 25, Wright said. Yet children are often subjected to judgmental circumstances like grades in schools.
“Teachers are harsh too often,” Wright said. “They graded you. Why didn’t the teacher get the grade? ‘Oh, I haven’t taught this child yet,’ but you don’t hear that attitude. It’s not trained. This is leading edge thinking. It hasn’t been trained enough to get into the school education system so a teacher knows that what you can expect is what you’ve taught and what the teacher before you taught.”
In Wright’s classes at Salish Kootenai College students can earn a good grade by extolling more work.
“You just have to work,” Wright said.
Instead of bombarding children with negativity, parents and caregivers should lean toward assuring their children that they have value as a person, Wright argues.
“Children and adults need to feel bright, beautiful, and be loved,” Wright said. “It has nothing to do with whether you can be a movie star. It has nothing to do with whether you can be an astrophysical scientist.”
People of all ages should feel happy that they are progressing at their own rate, not feel bad because they have been subjugated to expectations of others.
Instead of feeling “no good” for making mistakes, a child should be encouraged to learn from their own mistakes.
This is one of the concepts of PAX Good Behavior games that have been implemented at a majority of schools on the Flathead Reservation. The games reinforce positive behaviors, teach students to self-regulate and self-manage their actions.
The effects can be seen decades later, according to Montana Suicide Prevention Coordinator Karl Rossten. The Flathead Reservation is lucky that so many schools have adopted the PAX Good behavior system, he said in a January interview.
Instilling the ability to self-regulate negative thoughts is critical for Native American youth, who have the highest suicide rate of any demographic in the United States.
The following resources are available for suicide prevention and intervention.
Call the National Suicide Hotline at 1-800-273-8255 anytime.
For information about suicide prevention training call Roxana Colman-Herak at 406-676-2700 ext. 1361.
On March 20, Lake County Undersheriff Dan Yonkin will speak with the CSKT Circle of Trust Partners in Prevention and Intervention meeting about methamphetamine and social media.
