After six Woodson High suicides, a search for solace and answers

By Justin Jouvenal & T. Rees Shapiro

A memorial wreath and flowers are seen where
Jack Chen ended his life. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)

Washington Post~ The final evening of Jack Chen’s life was indistinguishable from many others. The sophomore returned home from school, ate dinner with his mother and retired to his room. His mother asked him to turn out his light at midnight.

Inside his bedroom, anguish gnawed at him, a darkness invisible to friends and family: He maintained a 4.3 grade-point average at one of the area’s top high schools, was a captain of the junior varsity football team and had never tried drugs or alcohol.

But that hidden pain drove Jack from his Fairfax Station home early the next morning — Wednesday, Feb. 26. The 15-year-old, who pestered his father to quit smoking and wear his safety belt, walked to nearby tracks and stepped between the rails as a commuter train approached.

His death is one of six apparent suicides at Fairfax’s W.T.Woodson High School during the past three years, including another student found dead the next day. The toll has left the school community reeling and prompted an urgent question: Why would so many teens from a single suburban school take their lives?

County officials say they do not believe the deaths are directly connected, and experts say that suicides among teens occurring in such a short span are extremely rare.

Students have cried openly in Woodson’s hallways while teachers have tried to show resilience. Frustrated parents have asked the Woodson leadership and school system administrators for answers while wondering whether the school’s high-pressure, high-achieving culture could be playing a role.

“A loss like this cuts a deep wound. It persists. It lingers. It’s very slow to heal,” said Steve Stuban, whose son attended Woodson and committed suicide in 2011. “I have no idea what causes this to occur with increased incidence. All I know is it seems it’s occurring more at Woodson than any other place in the county.”

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I Battle Histrionic Personality Disorder

By frozenFire6767

Experience Project~ Alrighty...  I was just recently diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and narcissistic and histrionic.. However you spell it. What I battle with most is being alone because eventually I'll find your weaknesses pretty quickly I'll know all your secrets and then if you hurt me once I will make you feel like you want to die ill make you feel like nothing. I have the wonderful capability of manipulation and I manipulate people to get what I want and I can change myself whoever I'm around I can be exactly who they want me to be. The biggest part I struggle with is that borderline personality disorder we somehow do not have this capability to find value in ourselves or love ourselves. So for me I try to find it through men and after many failed relationships, i'm in my late 20s and I've been married three times. Always with men who are either sociopaths emotionally abusive or physically abusive... I ever wonder will I ever love myself just because I love myself. Will this Always be impossible for me to do? When I love someone I love them hard and deep and fast but if they don't show me affection all the time don't text me withhold sex for me I will immediately go into the biggest depression and not be able to get out of it for weeks. Then I'll hurt them I will hurt them for not loving me and not accepting me and I will ruin them and run them into the ground without a care. Sometimes I feel bad about it later other times I don't. I can tell people exactly what they do not want to hear and I push their buttons and I like seeing them hurt and going over the edge and breaking. Yet on the other hand I can be the best friend that you've ever had I'll pick you up at 2 o'clock in the morning I'll listen to you whine and cry and I may not actually give a **** but I pretend to.... Yet I get so mad when you actually don't love me and I cry a lot. I Enjoy pain a lot which I think is really weird I have over 25 tattoos a **** ton of piercings and it's still not enough pain.... I graduated college I had amazing jobs that pay a lot but I never stick with them and I was finding excuse to quit I just wonder if I'm ever going to actually get my life together or is this the path that I'm going to keep taking over and over again for the rest my life... Yet through all of this I just want attention either good or bad I just want you to know that I am there and for some reason I care about what you think about me so much yet at the same time I don't give two *****

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White House Drug Policy Shifts Strategy New plan calls for treatment, not incarceration, for non-violent offenders

By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter

(HealthDay News) -- The Obama Administration has chosen the middle ground with its new drug control policy, advocating treatment over tough sentencing.

The approach, unveiled Tuesday, rejects both the harsh "war on drugs" approach, characterized by maximum sentences for drug offenses, and the push to legalize illegal drugs.

Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said during a news conference Tuesday that both approaches were "not humane or realistic, and not grounded in scientific evidence."

Instead, he said, the new blueprint calls for more community programs along with changes to the probation-and-parole system that would send non-violent offenders to substance abuse treatment.

"This is nothing short of a revolution in how we approach drug abuse," Kerlikowske said.

Although overall drug use is down in the United States, more Americans than ever are dying from drug-induced death, even more than from gunshot wounds, said Kerlikowske.

At the same time, more than 7 million people are under the supervision of the criminal justice system, either incarcerated or on probation or parole. Many have drug offenses, he noted.

"This underscores the need for different approaches for drug control, one that treats drug addiction as a disease, in which drug-related crime is addressed in a fair and equitable manner," Kerlikowske said. "We can't arrest our way out of the drug problem."

With that in mind, the new policy embraces three concepts, according to Kerlikowske's office: addiction is a disease that can be treated; people with substance use disorders can recover; and criminal justice reforms can stop the revolving door of drug use, crime, incarceration and re-arrest.

The new strategy builds on previous Obama Administration innovations, such as the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act, which rolled back a mandatory 100-to-1 minimum sentence disparity between powder and crack cocaine, put non-violent offenders into treatment via drug court and emphasized prevention, Kerlikowske said.

The new plan outlines more than 100 specific actions involving screening, brief interventions and referral to treatment and the Affordable Care Act, "which will make drug treatment a required benefit from all that suffer from substance abuse," Kerlikowske noted.

Much of the new plan centered on new strategies for dealing with parole and probation violations related to drug use.

Currently, people on probation and parole have 16 or 17 violations before they receive sanctions, said Angela Hawken, an associate professor of economics and policy analysis at Pepperdine University's School of Public Policy in Los Angeles.

A new program in Hawaii has shown success in arresting parole violators immediately and sentencing them to short periods of jail time followed by mandatory drug testing, the officials noted.

"Drug use is down 80 to 90 percent over baseline, arrests are down and there is a large reduction in costly probation revocations," Hawken said.

The new administration plan also emphasizes community-based programs, such as drug-free communities and youth campaigns.

"Our goal is to reform the public health system so we can learn to recognize the signs of drug addiction and intervene appropriately before the justice system becomes involved," Kerlikowske said. "There's a real reason to be optimistic with these reform efforts."