Word: ridgewood
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Jeff and Chris are the third and fourth Ridgewood, N.J., youngsters to die by their own hands in the past 18 months. The suicides sent shock waves through the affluent suburb (pop. 27,500), only 20 miles from Manhattan. Students cried unashamedly in school halls and embraced each other. A school official broke down during an interview. Bewildered parents repeatedly asked, "Why is it happening here...
Actually, the deaths could have happened almost anywhere in the U.S., where the rate of suicides among teen-agers has been rising in recent years. But what distinguishes Ridgewood is the community's spirited reaction to its tragedy. Immediately after the news of Mathieson's death, school officials worked through the night to map a strategy for dealing with the crisis. School Superintendent Samuel Stewart realized that he had two options: he could react dramatically to the community's grief by canceling classes, holding a school assembly or undertaking some other large new program, or he could...
...high school teachers at 7:15 a.m. and urged them to break the news to small groups of students during homeroom periods. "We decided not to interrupt school routine in any way," he said. During the day, the school's seven guidance counselors, joined by 15 Ridgewood clergymen, set up desks around the high school, offering counseling to any students who wanted...
Many school and community leaders think that extensive press coverage of the Jonestown massacre may have played a role in the deaths. Others see a deeper malaise. They talk of a workaholic climate in Ridgewood's school system, which sends 80% of its graduates on to college, many to first-rank universities. "The pressures are high," says Richard Roukema, chief of psychiatry at Ridgewood's Valley Hospital. "You add to that a high divorce rate and a high number of dead marriages, and you see a lot of youngsters in isolation, not relating to their parents...
...Steve Boehlke, 30, director of youth fellowship at Ridgewood's West Side Presbyterian Church, agrees. "These kids feel they have to look out for themselves because no one else will. It's a very lonely experience." To break through that psychological barrier, Boehlke is forming a new group, a fellowship of adult church members who want to learn how to relate to their children. Eighty parents came to the first meeting...