Friday, November 05, 2010

Building a better It Gets Better

I've been reading some of the criticisms of the It Gets Better project, and I have some thoughts, not all of which are solutions.

It's biased! It's anti-rural, anti-religious, and assumes higher education is right for everyone.

An effective It Gets Better has to tell the speaker's own truth. We each have to describe our own experiences, with our target audience being our younger selves. We simply aren't qualified to tell people whose needs or truths are different from our own how to make it better - we would descend into meaningless platitudes by attempting to do so, and troubled kids have already heard more than their fair share or meaningless platitudes.

My truth, as I have experienced it, is that leaving the church makes it get better, living in the city makes it get better, going to university is the easiest path to that.

My younger self would have needed to hear this message. It never would have occurred to her that the city could be better. She thought the city would be full of Big Mean City People, and if people were this mean to her in a Nice Friendly Small Town, surely they'd be even meaner in a Great Big Mean City. She had constantly been told that university is so much harder than high school and that your teen years are The Best Years Of Your Life and had never once been exposed to the idea that it might get easier. While it's obvious and practically cliche to us as adults, especially to the wired, savvy, meme-perpetuating demographic that is readily influenced by Savage Love, it was completely foreign to my younger self and this message would have been new and helpful to her.

If the It Gets Better project lacks a diversity of experiences, the solution is not for those of us for whom the urban atheist university route was helpful to STFU. The solution is for other people whose It Gets Better took a different path to speak the fuck up and tell their younger selves what worked for them. If it can be made to get better while staying the small town where you grew up, or while being religious, or without going to university, that's fantastic! But I personally don't know how to make that happen - I've only had the one set of life experience - so the people who do know other paths to make it get better need to chime in.

There's also the fact that that the original intention of It Gets Better is to prevent suicide. I haven't taken this stance myself because I believe in people's right to commit suicide if they want to, but if that truly is our goal then maybe we should be focusing on what will give kids a glimpse of the better rather than on perfect long-term planning. Just getting them into another environment where they aren't treated with contempt will help. For example, under normal circumstances you might not advise a kid to take on debt to go to university in a large expensive city when they aren't sure what they want to study or if university is even right for them. However, if that kid is bullied and suicidal, sending them on full OSAP to whatever Toronto post-secondary institution they can get into with permission to transfer or change their minds later guilt-free may well save their lives. Even if their course of study isn't right for them, they get to spend some time in a less judgemental environment that's away from prying eyes and conducive to experimenting and finding oneself. If this isn't the most optimal route, they can at least have a reprieve from all the bullying and judgement while they figure out what is. If you know another route that doesn't involve such a debt load, put it out there! In the meantime, we are sharing what we know.

But it doesn't get better for everyone!

If it hasn't gotten better for you, I am truly sorry. This is very much a problem and it very much needs to be solved, we just need a space outside of the It Gets Better project in which to do it. The people for whom it hasn't gotten better need to work on articulating why it hasn't gotten better for them, and then the It Gets Better community as a whole needs to work on figuring out what we can do to make it get better for everyone. This is important. Someone with influence needs to set it up. Because we do actually want it to get better for everyone.

However, within the original mandate of helping bullied kids, those of us for whom it has gotten better (my younger self never thought she'd be in a position to utter something so privilegy!) still do need to share the how and why, because it will be helpful to at least some troubled kids. We aren't trying to neener and we aren't trying to marginalize you, we're just trying to help the people whom our truth can help right this minute. We'd also very much like to help make it better for you too, and for everyone. Let's work together to figure out how.

Kids shouldn't have to wait for years and years for it to get better. We should make it better for them now!

I totally agree! I'd love to make it better for them now! No one should have to suffer what my younger self did! The problem is, I don't know how to make it better for kids right now. I haven't the slightest clue. If you can tell me, I'll do it. If there's brainstorming going on somewhere, I'd be happy to dive right in if I can be of help.

Blogging and tweeting my truths about It Gets Better for the benefit of kids who can identify with my younger self are things I can do right now, so I am doing them. I don't know of anything I can do right now to make it better for today's kids right now, so I haven't done anything. I would love to do something or to throw money at something to make it better instantly and if you tell me I'll do it. But I don't have that information at the moment, so I'm doing what little I can.

This reminds me of a problem I've noticed not just in It Gets Better, but in life in general. It Gets Better is telling kids that if they're bullied, they should tell an adult. Do adults know what to do if a kid comes to them saying they're being bullied? I don't know what to do and I get to be an adult. My parents didn't know what to do. Do teachers know what to do? Mine couldn't make the bullying stop, although there's certainly room for teachers' skills to have improved in the last 15-20 years. This happens in other areas of life too. When you're a kid, they tell you that if you find a needle you should tell an adult. As an adult, I don't know what to do if you find a needle. Any awareness campaign that tells kids to tell an adult needs a partner campaign that tells the adults what to do!

6 comments:

laura k said...

Excellent post, I just linked to it.

I also believe in a person's right to commit suicide, but in addition, I distinguish between a suicide that hinges on a lack of resources or compassion and a decision not based on need.

For example, a person in constant unremitting pain may wish to end her life. That's her right - but it should also be her right to have access to pain medication and whatever other support is necessary - which might end up being suicide prevention.

Likewise a person who needs treatment for depression or help caring for a disabled child, and so on.

I suspect that if everyone had access to quality treatment, there would still be suicides, but more people could be helped to live a life they might find tolerable or even good.

Of course, universal access to good resources doesn't exist, and sometimes the right resources don't even exist. Either way, I do support a person's right to end their own life if they choose.

Not sure if this gets a #LeastImportantThing tag or not.

impudent strumpet said...

I don't know if suicide CAN be #LeastImportantThing - it's just too serious a subject!

There really needs to be a way for people who are suicidal to seek help for the problem that's making them suicidal (in cases where the problem is something specific that can be articulated and solved, like chronic pain) without the people who can help them having to report and/or act on the fact that they're suicidal.

I don't actually know the truth of the matter, but I have the impression (which means that other people probably also have the impression) that if you say to a doctor "I'm in so much pain it makes me want to kill myself," you're going to end up restrained in a mental ward under constant monitoring. Or, alternatively, they might consider you histrionic and attention-seeking for saying you're going to kill yourself. Whereas if the doctor says "Okay, we do still have a few different pain management options available here, let's work through them and if none of them work we can talk about euthanasia options." Or if the invocation of suicide simply led the doctor to perhaps consider something with more side effects or that might be harmful in the long-term but will bring relief.

If I were in charge of helping a suicidal bullied teenager, I'd do what I can to help them make a plan, and then tell them outright "Just try this for a year after high school. You can always kill yourself later if it doesn't work." And that approach would have made me trust an adult when I was a kid. But people in actual positions of authority would never be allowed to do it.

laura k said...

Your approach would seem particularly apt, because suicide is (apparently) often an impulse made during the darkest time, and the check of that impulse, the realization that there might be some relief, even temporary relief, can be very powerful.

I know of a situation where a therapist of a young person told the young person's mom, your daughter is at risk for suicide and needs hospitalization.

The teen, mom and therapist talked about it together and decided on a care plan. It included a brief hospital stay, but that was therapeutic and beneficial - not forced. Like a lot of people, this teen didn't want to die if there was another way. The mom and the therapist helped her find the beginning of the path there.

I was an adult when this happened. The hospital stay helped turn the young person's life around. It was very eye-opening for me. I didn't know it could work that way.

I'm under the impression that if a person will actually say they are suicidal, they are hoping for help. Not that they're not serious about it, they may indeed try to kill themselves, but they want help.

Whereas if the doctor says "Okay, we do still have a few different pain management options available here, let's work through them and if none of them work we can talk about euthanasia options." Or if the invocation of suicide simply led the doctor to perhaps consider something with more side effects or that might be harmful in the long-term but will bring relief.

That sounds so compassionate and sensible.

laura k said...

Oh btw, I'm posting this on FB, duly reporting for your Sitemeter stats.

impudent strumpet said...

I'm under the impression that if a person will actually say they are suicidal, they are hoping for help. Not that they're not serious about it, they may indeed try to kill themselves, but they want help.

I've heard that before, and I always took it to be a platitude along the lines of "children crave structure." But based on the way people said it (context, connotations, etc.) I always interpreted "help" as convincing/coercing/forcing someone not to commit suicide. i.e. "People who are suicidal really want to be cured of their suicidal ideation." And I found that idea kind of scary, almost brainwashy.

But based on this conversation, it occurs to me that maybe by "help" they mean help with the problems - make the pain go away, make the bullying stop, etc. That would make far more sense.

But I'm not entirely sure whether or not that's what they mean. Some people are so vehemently anti-suicide that I think they think that being restrained in a mental institution but still alive = success.

laura k said...

Yes, there's an important distinction there. I think - based on reading, personal experience with friends, and my own past experience with suicidal thoughts - the "cry for help" thing that has become so cliched is (at least sometimes) a wish for actual help, i.e. make the pain stop.

Some people are so vehemently anti-suicide that I think they think that being restrained in a mental institution but still alive = success.

I agree. There's an incredible bias against suicide - a belief that it can never be a rational act, that it must be stopped at all costs - then a great stigma for surviving family. In previous generations, families routinely lied about the cause of death. (Maybe people still do, I just associate that behaviour with an outdated mentality of finding "shame" in everything, then not talking about anything considered shameful.)