Meghan Manheim displays a framed photograph of a smiling young man who could be any of the 34 Bainbridge High School freshmen focused on the image.

“This is my brother Garth,” Manheim tells them. “He would have graduated with the class of 2003. But he didn’t, he died when he was 16.

“He’s the reason we started doing all this stuff.”

Manheim, a junior, was joined by seniors Kodi Semon and Tristan Estridge in suicide-prevention presentations this week to BHS health classes, as part of the school’s mental health awareness curriculum.

Garth Manheim took his own life in 2001. In the 30 months since, five more local young people have ended their lives, two on Bainbridge and three in North Kitsap.

According to the National institute of Mental Health, one in five teens seriously consider taking their lives and one in 10 teens will attempt suicide.

Estridge, Semon and Manheim are hoping to educate teens to reach out to troubled friends and remove the stigma of mental illness that might prevent a depressed peer from seeking help.

“Some kids feel they have no one to talk to,” Manheim said. “We’re trying to get rid of that (idea) right now.”

The presentations followed an all-school assembly Monday on suicide prevention, and the Just Know forum last Saturday, held to educate community members about the problems facing island teens. Each is a facet of the new push to address youth issues head-on, BHS Principal Brent Peterson said.

“It’s part of a broader commitment to raise the level of conversation around the issues of risky behaviors and challenging health issues,” Peterson said. “All these challenging topics must be addressed on multiple levels.”

The first level of defense is often a teen’s peers – if they know how to recognize a friend’s dilemma and then are aware of resources.

Manheim and others list circumstances that may contribute to depression, a risk factor for suicide, including a general feeling of hopelessness and anxiety to the breakup of a relationship; conflict or divorce at home; and pressure for grades at school may contribute to teens feeling overwhelmed.

Teens are particularly prone to depression, Moore says, because the influx of hormones temporarily disrupts the re-uptake of serotonin, the brain chemical that regulates a sense of well-being.

Depressed teens may be hard to recognize, since symptoms may include anger or agitation, rather than overt unhappiness. They may mask symptoms with a smile – as did Ross Szabo, the speaker at Monday’s all-school assembly.

However, not everyone who is temporarily unhappy is suicidal.

One may draw a distinction between the occasional “down day” and the depression that consumes whole weeks. Morbid sketches in a notebook margin may not mean much – but coupled with such risk factors as stress and social isolation, themes of death may be ominous clues to a friend’s mental state.

Estridge, Semon and Manheim say that there are adults who can help: school counselors, help hotlines, doctors, mental health counselors and even hospital emergency room staff.

“It is urgent care,” Moore said. “If they’re thinking about doing it (committing suicide) they need help right away.”

Consultation is confidential, unless the suicide risk seems imminent.

Then, breaking a friend’s confidence may save a life, Estridge, Semon and Manheim point out.

“They might say, ‘Promise me you won’t tell anyone. Promise you won’t tell my mom,’” Semon said. “You go tell someone anyway. It’s a life-threatening emergency.

“You have to tell.”

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***Tales of depression and recovery

The three teens speaking to Bainbridge High School health instructor Charissa Moore’s health classes this week have lived the curriculum they teach; all have overcome depression and self-destructive impulses.

After her brother’s suicide in 2001, Meghan Manheim was hospitalized twice – once for cutting herself and once for overdosing on antidepressants.

“It was my freshman year,” Manheim said. “My brother had just died. I was in a new school. I had good friends – but I didn’t know how to talk to them.”

Manheim didn’t want to burden her grieving family with more worries about her growing depression.

“Suicide really runs in my family,” she said. “We’ve had a bunch.”

By the time school let out for the summer, Manheim was cutting herself two to three times per week and hiding the cuts with long sleeves.

The isolation of summer vacation brought matters to a head, and Manheim was admitted to Bellevue’s Overlake Hospital for five days.

The stay didn’t help much, she says, and the hospital sent her away with an antidepressant and stacks of reading material.

Sophomore year, Manheim loaded herself with extracurricular activities. While they were fun, they also added stress. The medication wasn’t alleviating the depression and in March of this year, Manheim overdosed, taking 70 pills.

This time, she was hospitalized at University of Washington Medical Center for 10 days.

A team of doctors worked with her intensively, she says, and she attended group therapy. Family and friends came regularly to visit.

“That experience was a wake-up,” she said. “I didn’t think that I’d be missed that much. But there were so many people who visited. My family came every day. When I got out, it was so amazing. People were there for me.”

Manheim now takes a more effective medication.

“What keeps me taking my pills every day is that I never want to go back to that place. It was such a lonely place.”

* * *

Tristan Estridge began to cut himself in sixth grade.

“My parents were fighting a lot,” he said. “They’d be up to 3 a.m. every night. I could tell a divorce was coming. I started cutting a lot. “

The practice of self-inflicted cuts is an addictive one, Estridge notes. What begins as an impulsive tension-reliever may soon become a habit.

“I needed a release,” he said. “I didn’t want to drink because my whole family has a big drinking problems. It (cutting) was a temporary adrenaline rush – but then the pain would come. I had them all the way up my arm.”

Kodi Semon, who used cutting and substance abuse to escape family conflict, says it was anger at herself that first drove her to cut.

“I’d get in a fight with a friend. I’d get stressed out and I’d cut. It would relieve that anxiety.”

For Estridge, the wake-up call was a particularly deep wound that wouldn’t stop bleeding. He ran to a neighbor’s for help.

“If it wasn’t for my friend,” he said, “I probably wouldn’t be here today.”

Semon stopped using substances and cutting when her parents intervened.

Today, Manheim, Estridge and Semon talk to someone when they reach the “red zone.”

“Life gets stressful,” Estridge said. “You get stressed out. But I stop when I look down and see the scars. That could have ended my life.”