Youth suicides, particularly among young Pacific people are causing great concern in New Zealand and the fact that 14 Pacific people, many of whom were young Tongans took their own lives in the Manukau district in the latter part of 2011 has prompted organisations there to work together to create a massive prevention and support programme.
Counties-Manukau District Health Board has been working with youth from 100 south Auckland churches and other organisations such as Youthline.
Speaking to Adrian Evans of the Manukau Courier, Board project manager, Gilli Sinclair, says, "We all come from families and we all live in families so we need to work across families and communities.”
"We're working hard with church ministers and youth leaders. We're trying to work across the community because we think that's how it will work – providing everybody with support, providing everybody with increased information and training people so they can assess and identify young people at risk better."
It is hard to pinpoint reasons for the suicides as most of the people had no prior mental health issues and a lot of the cases seem to be impulsive decisions, completely out of character for the victims. This makes planning help for young people rather difficult.
Otara church leader and youth worker Pauline Vaahakola sees the struggle young people face each day.
She says it's about time more people and agencies became involved with finding a solution to the tragedy of suicide, especially among young people.
"Kids are taking their lives because they have no hope but they can’t talk to anybody. I believe the community needs to help the community."
"Government departments and community networks have some keys but they don't have all the answers. And it's trying to get everybody in the community to combine their resources instead of picking at each other, saying they've got the best one. Every group has somebody in it with the right answer but you have to combine them together."
The clinical services manager of Youthline, Glenda Schnell, says the high number of Pacific deaths has "triggered" the need for new ways of responding to youth suicide within those communities. Key information recently translated into Samoan and Tongan is ready to launch and her organisation is also looking at ways of using social media to connect with young people.
"We want people to not only see the information but hear it in a way that is culturally appropriate as well."
Ms Schnell says no data is available on the total number of suicides within south Auckland during the period mentioned and that highlights a need for more cohesion in information gathering and sharing between agencies.
"There is no one agency that has all those records so it is about trying to match up and see what can be confirmed from different data," Ms Schnell says.
Coroner's office communications manager Steve Corbett says the office is looking at other ways of reporting statistics but is unsure if that will include ethnicity by region.
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