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Stan Grant: This stops now

COMMENT | Children in our communities are taking their own lives. We need to speak out, or risk losing another generation.

Stan Grant

Stan Grant says we have to join together to stop child suicide. Source: NITV

Words are just not enough to express the grief and tragedy we all feel today at the suicide of a 10-year-old girl in Western Australia.

What we do at NITV - telling the stories of our people, asking questions, looking for answers, just feels so inadequate.

No matter what I say it will risk sounding trite and I know it will not be enough.

But it is all I have.

Watch Stan Grant speak about youth suicide rates:

All we can do is push and prompt and probe - we can try to get other people talking and maybe in all that talking we can at least find our common humanity.

No child anywhere should see the future so bleak that they take their own life - and yet it happens in our communities and it happens again and again. Indigenous kids under the age of 14 are nine times more likely to commit suicide.

We all share that pain and we all share that burden of responsibility: what is wrong in our communities? How does Australia's greatness stand in the face of this heartbreaking loss?

This stops now - we have to say it and we have to mean it - this stops now.

Will it? Maybe that is too much to ask. Words are not enough, but if we can't say it, then we will surely lose another generation.

This stops now. If there is any point to this at all. then we have to say it: this stops now.

Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact on 1300 224 636, on 13 11 14 or on 1300 659 467.


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Delve into the latest Indigenous news and features from NITV's agenda-setting program, The Point. Read more about NITV
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2 min read
Published 9 March 2016 8:32pm
Updated 9 March 2016 10:22pm
By Stan Grant
Source: The Point


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