Sixteen-year-old Shavi Sikaria is one of the numbers.

Last April, she attempted to kill herself at Eastlake High School, taking 100 pills of pain relievers.

But before she told her story during the Walking into Darkness: Understanding the Suicidal Youth community forum on Sept. 29 at Sammamish City Hall, speakers presented some statistics.

The numbers can be staggering. But knowing or seeing the faces attached to them can really drive the statistics home.

That was one of the points presenters discussed at the Walking into Darkness: Understanding the Suicidal Youth community forum, which took place Sept. 29 at Sammamish City Hall.

The discussion was a collaborative effort between the cities of Issaquah and Sammamish, as well as several local organizations, including Friends of Youth, CrossPath and Youth Eastside Services.

Vida Vasaitis, a youth and family counselor with Friends of Youth, opened the discussion acknowledging that youth suicide is a difficult topic to broach and noted the forum’s low turnout of 12 or so people.

She relayed that since the beginning of the school year, four kids from local schools had already been hospitalized relating to cases of suicidal youth.

“It’s been three weeks in and it’s already starting,” Vasaitis said. “It never ends. At the agency, we start to see that kids’ anxiety starts to really amp up right before school and then it just starts to carry … they’re going to go back into a situation where maybe they were bullied, they’re not sure of who they are, they’re not sure of where they belong in the school system and it’s really challenging.”

Vasaitis commented the statistics are difficult to look at considering their volume and the fact that they’re not just numbers; they represent people.

Among the statistics Vasaistis mentioned was that suicide is the second-leading cause of death in the state of Washington for youth aged 10-24 years old. Females attempted suicide more frequently, but males died by suicide more often by a ratio of 4 to 1.

Citing numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2009 through 2012, 1,852 people between the ages of 13 and 19 died by suicide in the U.S., with 78 percent of the fatalities being male and 22 percent female. Citing numbers from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, Vasaitis stated one out of every 16 high school students reported having attempted suicide at least once. One out of every seven students reported to have seriously considered attempting suicide within the previous year.

“One of the things that I run into a lot is a lot of parents say, ‘It’s a phase.’ Well, yes and no,” Vasaitis said. “… the idea that this is a way out is much more present in our media now than [it was] in the past.”

Suzanne Peterson, a specialist with Youth Eastside Services, touched on the potential warning signs, which included youth talking about wanting to die or of feeling empty, hopeless or trapped. Other warning signs mentioned were substance abuse, youth acting anxious or agitated, or youth withdrawing from family and friends.

Sarah Dochow, clinical director with CrossPath counseling, said talking with youth about suicide prevention “is a talk that we should be having with every youth.”

“It’s not just for youth that have the warning signs or the risk factors, but just like we talk to all youth, hopefully, about drugs and alcohol and sex and consent, we should be also be talking to all youth about suicide,” Dochow said. “Even if the youth in your household or that you know isn’t depressed or isn’t feeling suicidal, they likely have a friend that is. … Every teenager I’ve worked with knows somebody who’s thought about suicide or is affected by this in some way.”

Dochow’s strategies for talking to youth about suicide included three steps: listen, assess and refer. She stated parents should assess if immediate attention is needed, and mentioned the resources for at-risk assessments included CrossPath in Sammamish, Issaquah’s Friends of Youth, Youth Eastside Services in Bellevue and the Crisis Clinic in Seattle. The 24-hour Crisis Clinic line is available at 866-4Crisis. Another option is the teen crisis line Teen Link at 866-833-6546, which is available every evening from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.

A face to the stats

After each presenter had finished reeling off stats to those in attendance, Sikaria, a sophomore at Eastlake High, took the head of the room.

“So you probably had a lot facts given to you today about what you should do and what you shouldn’t do about suicide and suicide prevention and things that you need to do to be careful about people’s lives,” she said. “This is what happened to me on paper.”

She spoke of how she attempted to take her own life last April. She was in intensive care for four days and then moved to a stabilization facility for another two weeks.

Today, Sikaria is healthy and stable and letting people know what happened to her in hopes of addressing the issue.

“I’m a person just like a normal teenager. I go through some other things that other teenagers do, and I’m not that one person in the corner who wears black and doesn’t talk to people,” she said. “There’s a stereotype around suicide and that’s not true. You never know who’s going to be [dealing with] it.”

Sikaria said now from a survivor’s perspective, she learned that a lot of those around her blamed themselves for not being able to stop her attempt, though she doesn’t believe there was much more those people could’ve done. Asked what she’d like to see done about the issue, particularly from the perspective of a high school teen, Sikaria said she wanted to see less stigma surrounding it to open up the conversation.

“[People] don’t talk about things that happen to people that aren’t necessarily positive … they think of mental health as a disease,” she said.

Sikaria said being open to people is important, which is partly why she’s choosing to share her story. She wants to be able to give back something after what happened. Her ultimate goal is to create a type of community center in Sammamish, a resource for at-risk youth who need a safe place to go for resources like counseling or therapists.

Sikaria told those in attendance she wants to be present for other young people who may be going through the same struggle she faced.

“That’s one thing that I really wanted when I was going through it, was somebody to talk to who had been through it and understood, not just a therapist talking at me,” she said.