STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
This next story discusses suicide, which we need to talk about because suicide rates have gone up. In particular, researchers say suicide rates are rising for Black teenagers. NPR's Katia Riddle asked a family at a church in Harlem how they would address it.
KATIA RIDDLE, BYLINE: There's a story that is told and retold in the Green Dorvil family. It's about their son, Gabriel, when he was a baby. His parents had taken him to a doctor's appointment. Here's his mom, Marchelle.
MARCHELLE GREEN DORVIL: He was getting shots, you know, immunizations, whatever, and he's probably 16 or 18 months old. And Dr. Price said to us, he's going to be a giant.
RIDDLE: The doctor also gave Gabriel's parents this ominous warning.
GREEN DORVIL: People will automatically believe that he's aggressive. But he was right about both aspects, not just the physical aspect but how people perceive large, you know, huge people.
RIDDLE: Today, people often mistake Gabriel for an adult.
GREEN DORVIL: And I know that that's a hard concept for even teachers to grasp. You're looking at someone that's 6'4", you know, a certain amount of pounds, a huge, big frame. This is a 14-year-old child.
GABRIEL GREEN DORVIL: I've had to adapt and understand that everybody's not going to see me the same.
RIDDLE: For Gabriel, accepting this unusual quality about himself has been difficult.
GABRIEL: They're just not going to see me how my family sees me, how my friends see me. And I really just have to be vigilant of how I move around people, right?
RIDDLE: There was a period a few years back. Gabriel was really struggling.
GABRIEL: And I believe I'm usually a talkative person. I'm usually, like, extrovert kind of, right? But during that time, it was just all shut down. Like, I wasn't talking to anybody. I didn't talk to my friends. I didn't go outside. Really, my bed was my best friend.
RIDDLE: His bed was his best friend. But he did get involved with a group at First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem. It's part of a pilot program around the country. The goal is to offer mental health interventions for teens through churches. Lena Green is a social worker. She runs this program. She initially started it because of all the panicked calls she was getting from parents.
LENA GREEN: Like, my - you know, I'm afraid to go to sleep because I don't know if I'm going to lose my kid or not.
RIDDLE: The church has not lost any kids to suicide, but Green feels the weight of that risk every day.
GREEN: There almost isn't a week that goes by that we don't hear about self-harm or a suicide attempt in some way, shape or form.
RIDDLE: Some experts warn the increase in suicide rate for Black teens has been steeper than any other racial group. In one recent 13-year period, it increased by 144%. No one can say definitively what is causing this crisis. Green has a few thoughts.
GREEN: The bottom line is that we can't keep up with social media, right? They have this device in their hand 24/7.
RIDDLE: She says social media sets up impossible expectations for these kids.
GREEN: Combating European standards of beauty, especially with children of color, has always been a challenge in our community as well. And then when we're thinking about some of the pressures around having name-brand items and those kinds of things where, you know, certain families can't keep up with that kind of stuff, right?
RIDDLE: At this program, Green and other mental health experts talk to the kids about that dynamic. They give them language to describe what is going on for them. They work to disabuse them of stigma around mental health care. That was the case for Gabriel.
GABRIEL: I tried to stay away from self-harming myself, even though I was in a time of sadness. And I know that's what some people do.
RIDDLE: He learned to see the reasons why people treat him like they do.
GABRIEL: Talking to my therapist about that has really helped me understand, like, it's not really their fault. It's more of, like, an instinct, and it's just going to happen.
RIDDLE: Instead of getting hung up on this, Gabriel says he chooses to honor his own instinct to live.
Katia Riddle, NPR News, Harlem.
(SOUNDBITE OF DEVOTCHKA AND MYCHAEL DANNA'S "THE WINNER IS")
INSKEEP: Anyone in crisis can call or text 988 - just those three numbers, 988 - for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
(SOUNDBITE OF DEVOTCHKA AND MYCHAEL DANNA'S "THE WINNER IS") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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