South Florida Suicide Prevention Conference Tackles Teen Depression

Kevin Hines slammed into the San Francisco Bay at 95 miles per hour after leaping 225 feet from the Golden Gate Bridge at age 19.

"I was drowning. I couldn’t stay above water," said Hines, as he described how the compression fractures he suffered in the fall left him unable to walk during his recovery period.

Hines, now 42, told attendees at the inaugural South Florida Suicide Awareness Conference that a sea lion kept him afloat in the bay before Coast Guard officers brought him to shore.

“Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional,” Hines said at the March 4 conference.

As a toddler, Hines lived in crack-laden motels about San Francisco’s notorious Tenderloin neighborhood, he said, until his biological parents did him a "solid" and put him up for adoption. By age 17, the muscular, 5-foot-7-inch, high school wrestler was unable to silence the pain of living with bipolar disorder. Hines said this led him to the Golden Gate bridge on September 25, 2000, where he tried to end his life.

"People invalidate our pain because they cannot see it," Hines, a suicide prevention speaker who has shared his story at thousands of schools worldwide, told the audience. "You are here because you are doing work to change lives."

In the two decades since Hines' leap, the suicide rate in the United States has sharply increased, with an unsettling rise in suicide deaths among youth, particularly teenage girls.

Some theories about why young people are more often committing suicide center on the emergence of social media and how it makes the social pressures of school and peer groups inescapable even at home. Other theories focus on spiking stress levels in teens and their parents. Awareness of suicidal and self-harming behaviors among youth may have played a role in the rise in the suicide rate as well.

The trend has been reflected in Florida, where the suicide rate among 15 to 19 year olds increased by more than 40 percent between 2011 and 2020.

"Teens today are less able to escape negative communication and bullying because it happens online and over text messaging," psychiatrist and University of Texas Southwestern professor Betsy Kennard wrote. "Teen use of technology has skyrocketed in the same timeframe as the spike in social media which does not indicate causation, but some speculate that it may play a role."

At the South Florida conference, Kathryn Coppola, the executive director of the Miami-Dade chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), cited a nationwide 2021 survey of more than 17,000 high school students, which highlights “some very alarming trends.”

"One out of 10 high school students in the U.S. attempted suicide one or more times," Coppola said. "So, you all know someone."

Billed as "Honest Talk about Suicide and Messages of Hope," the conference included psychiatrists, psychologists, pastors, and other mental health advocates, who noted that the suicide rate among Black youth ages 10 to 24 has increased 36.6 percent since 2018. Among LGBTQ youth, 45 percent have considered suicide, a 2022 Trevor Project survey pamphlet said.

The event was sponsored by the NAMI Miami-Dade chapter, Thriving Mind of South Florida, the State of Florida, and the Florida Department of Children and Families. It was hosted at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables.

According to NAMI, local programs underway include peer counseling, an "Ending the Silence" program aimed at Miami area middle and high schools, and an initiative to prevent suicide in Black communities.

In 2020, 45,979 people died by suicide in the U.S., resulting in one death every 11 minutes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's the second leading cause of death for young people ages 15 to 24, the CDC says.

In Miami-Dade County, 215 persons died by suicide in 2020, about seven percent of Florida suicides that year, according to the Florida Department of Health statistics. 

Hines says that fighting depression alone is not the answer.

"There are two techniques I use to stay right here," Hines tells New Times. "The first thing I do is look in the mirror and tell myself that my thoughts do not have to become my actions. The second thing I do is turn to anyone willing to listen and say I need help now.

"Ask for help, and if you do not get it, turn to the next person, and then the next person, until you do," Hines says. "You do matter."

According to NAMI, suicide warning signs include:

- Social isolation
- Unexplained anger or aggression
- Taking unnecessary risks
- Neglecting personal appearance
- History of mental illness

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline or go to http://988lifeline.org.