Grace Loncar Died

Grace Loncar took her own life.  I saw her obituary in the Dallas Morning News.  Teen suicides do not normally make the news but Grace’s family is well known in the community.  Her dad is prominent attorney Brian Loncar and her mother Sue the artistic director at the Contemporary Theater of Dallas.  Grace was sixteen and junior at the award winning Booker T. Washington School for the Performing Arts.  Grace has already made a name for herself on stage.  The obituary noted that she had battled depression since age eleven.  The disease finally won and now her family and friends grieve her loss.

I grieve too.  Depression and teen suicide are issues I am all too familiar with.  I dealt with depressed student when I was a high school counselor.  The threat of suicide was always present and I took it seriously. Suicide has always been high on the list as a cause of death among American teens.  It has always been tough being a teenager and the increasing pressure to succeed can be overwhelming.  Then there is the struggle for identity and the desire to conform to the counterfeit image the world establishes.  There was a time when these matters were confined to the home and school hallway but in the world of social media they can be out there for the whole world to see.

The topic of depression and teen suicide recently was a front page story on Time Magazine.  The article noted that percentage of teens who have had a major episode of depression in the last year has grown from 8% in 2006 to 12.5% in 2015: an alarming increase.  Girls are almost three times more likely than boys to suffer from depression.  Boy are, however, more likely to suffer from anxiety disorders.  An estimated 6.3 million teens are afflicted with some form of anxiety disorder.

The responsibility for responding to the epidemic of depression and suicide should not fall on parents and educators alone.  It is a community problem.  That should especially be the case within the family of believers.  It begins when we offer a smile and encouraging word to the teens and young adults who are around us.  It continues when we accept them for who they are, instead of asking them to conform to our standards.  It continues when we engage in conversation and learn to listen to them their concerns and opinions.  It also means watching for the warning signs of depression.  When we see something, say something. 

Next time you pass a teen or young adult who seems sad think of Grace Loncar.  I do not want to read another teen obituary.