22 suicides on Guam since January

by Sabrina Salas Matanane

Guam - Every two weeks someone commits suicide on Guam. It was one of the many heart-wrenching revelations during today's day-long oversight hearing examining services provided to the island's youth. Mental Health's Helen Paulino told lawmakers that in the last nine months alone there have been 22 suicides on Guam, six were committed just last month.

60 percent of all suicides are occurring in people on Guam 30 years old and younger. The youngest victim was ten years old. Senator Tony Ada asked, "What are we not doing right?"

One respondent said, "We need to continue bring awareness to our community, and to the general population make a change to Guam's rates of suicide. We may not see an immediate decrease, but if we can see a change in behaviors then we can say we helped.   Find a funding source. We currently don't have a grant to move forward it will be great to continue to have a support so we can continue to have that support in that area so we can continue our efforts in education."

Lawmakers recognized the need that more attention should be placed on prevention rather than support. Some suggestions to spread awareness were to launch an aggressive mass media campaign as well as bringing all support agencies together to come up with one plan of action to control the suicide epidemic on Guam.