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Over 100 students from 13 different high schools in Belize City sat in today at an open discussion hosted by the Association and the Department of Youth Services. This year's "Mental Health Youth Symposium" funded by UNICEF took a look at a wide range of topics relating to mental health and suicide prevention, The president of the mental health association, Christa Courtenay gave more details today.

Christa Courtenay, President Mental Health Association
"Typically the mental health association has hosted a speech competition each year for world mental health day in October but in the last couple of years with the changes of Covid and re-engaging with high schools we have not been able to. The event hasn't really come back the same way so this year we have decided to combine suicide prevention under the theme changing the narrative and our engagement with high school students in the form of a youth symposium related to the topic of suicide prevention. Changing the narrative kind of explains itself a little bit but we want to make sure that we are providing spaces for engaging conversations cause conversations are really powerful in preventing suicide people that feel open to talk about their feelings or the fact that they might be having suicidal ideas is a key element in being able to prevent them. Not the only one obviously but a very important one so the event is deigned to be a peer conversation so we have 6 panelists that are all high school students from six different high schools so they have their own representation for the panel and I think we have 13 different high school who sent a delegation of students to participate in the panel discussion from the audience. So it's really to promote the engagement, changing the narrative including young people in the conversation of suicide prevention. When you look at the statistics the age group of 15-19 you have the highest number of attempts and so a previous attempt is a high indicator of eventually succumbing to your illness or completing suicide later on so if we can target that particular audience I think we have an opportunity to bring those suicide numbers down. Reduce and end the stigma around having these types of conversations and really opening up for younger people especially here in Belize."