Teenagers are hit particularly hard by suicide, with 500 Canadian teens taking their own lives each year – second only to car crashes among the most common causes of death for that age group.
In 2004, Trevor Broome was one of those 500.
The Kitchener teen was an avid hockey player with a knack for making people smile. But one day in February, without telling anybody, he skipped class, headed home and killed himself.
Later that day, his family found him.
“I’ll never forget that moment,” says sister Kelsey Broome, who was 11 at the time.
“It’s the worst day of my life, and it always will be.”
There was no suicide note, no way to tell what was running through Trevor’s mind. There weren’t any warning signs either.
“He was a popular kid,” says Kelsey.
“He wasn’t lonely. He didn’t have any visible issues. If you looked at him, you didn’t see it.”
Only later did clues bubble up to the surface. As it turned out, Trevor had visited different doctors in an attempt to get help.
Kelsey says her brother’s concerns weren’t taken seriously – the doctors, the only people he attempted to open up to, weren’t listening.
In the nine years since Trevor’s death, Kelsey says she’s had her own dark thoughts. So does Zaq Larocque, a friend of Kelsey’s.
But they say what ultimately kept them alive was wanting to spare their families from the grief and pain the Broomes felt upon losing Trevor.
“I don’t want them to think they couldn’t stop it, or they didn’t matter, or they weren’t important enough for me to stay around,” says Larocque.
Instead, they say their fight now is to help other teens open up about suicidal thoughts.
“It needs to be brought out in the open,” says Kelsey.
“It needs to be a topic we can talk about without feeling ashamed of ourselves.”
