At least one adult

At least one adult As an extension of Suicide Prevention Month, I’d like to turn our attention to an often-overlooked protective factor against the risk of suicide and other threats to safety: having a reliable relationship with an adult whom one can feel safe enough to turn to. In our first year of clinical training, I was assigned to a community school. This was a school that received students who were kicked out of mainstream schools in the county. They weren’t just struggling with academics; a lot of them were involved in petty crimes and juvenile gang activity. Their neighborhood was infamous for having the highest murder rate per capita, with someone they knew being shot every day. This was the violent environment that the kids were growing up in. Their prospects of a nonviolent life were dim, with kids regularly recruited into gangs. My supervisor, who has a background in social work, taught us about the principle of “at least one adult.” Studies show that having at least one stable and caring relationship with an adult helps develop resilience. For this particular neighborhood, it would mean improving their chances of breaking out of the cycle of violence. Such adults are not limited to parents or family. They can be a teacher, a neighbor, a family friend, or a community mentor. As such, the community-based organization I trained at firmly believed that by providing counselors at schools, they can ensure that there will be “at least one adult” who believes in the children. The adult cannot necessarily change the child’s entire environment. (Ask any teacher or parent; I’m confident they will agree.) What a good relationship can offer, however, is to ensure that the child does not feel alone when they’re faced with obstacles and challenges. A problem can look very different, perhaps more manageable and feasible, when we know that someone is on our side. Resilience and courage are not found merely within us but also drawn from our stable relationships. When we know that we do not have to struggle alone, or that someone understands what we are going through, this mitigates our sense of threat. A reliable relationship can help keep the fight-or-flight response at bay. As such, cognitive abilities such as contextual reasoning, critical thinking, long-term planning, problem solving, sound judgment, and emotion regulation remain accessible to us, allowing us to see and consider all our options. While desperation makes us feel that we are running out of options, the experience of a reliable relationship opens us up to more. Experiencing a good relationship can be the counterevidence we need when faced with hopelessness and jadedness, both risk factors for suicide. Beck’s cognitive triad of depression theorizes that someone who experiences depression holds negative views about the world, the self, and the future. A stable and caring relationship can provide disconfirming evidence for such negative beliefs. When we lose hope about the world, our experience of a good relationship reminds us that good people still exist and that good people find us worthy of love. Having the experience of someone accepting us for who we are without judgment can be the vaccine to clinical perfectionism and an intolerance of the mistakes and missteps we make along the way. Having someone have genuine faith in our potential, therefore not pressuring us to perform faster and better, can remind us of our capacity to grow, no matter how stuck or stagnant we feel our lives to be. Having faith in our potential also helps us ward off hopelessness about the future, remembering that life will not always be this way. When we think of adults in a child’s life, we mistakenly think that the adult’s job is to tell the child what to do. We think of the rules to impose and the limits to enforce. We focus on correcting their mistakes. What optimizes an adult’s presence in the child’s life is not just the structure they provide but the relationship in which the child feels seen and understood. How they are reflected in this relationship determines how they begin to see themselves. If an adult loves them unconditionally, they begin to love themselves the same way. If an adult demonstrates patience and understanding when it comes to missteps and derailments, the child learns to be kind to themselves and trust that life will blossom for them eventually. A stable and caring relationship needs time and effort to be built. It cannot be merely a reactive response to an acute threat to safety. True prevention starts at the beginning. We, as adults, can be that one adult for others. We may not be able to solve all their problems, but showing up for them can change the trajectory of their lives. (I looked into that neighborhood again for this piece, almost two decades later. They just celebrated two years of no homicides. At least one adult.) —————- aatuazon@up.edu.ph