Behind Kaitlyn's suicidePage 2 of 4 -- ''There are so many questions I want to ask her, and it's so hard not being able to," said Shannon Sullivan, 17, Kaitlyn's best friend. Shannon, Kaitlyn's parents, and her journals all point to relationship problems as the root of Kaitlyn's depression.
When she was 14, she began going out with a boy whom Shannon and others described as controlling and troubled. The boy's mother, when contacted by the Globe, declined to pass on a request for an interview, or to comment herself. In her journals, Kaitlyn goes back and forth between saying how much she loves him and how much she hates him. Days before her death, she broke up with him and started going out with another boy. But Kaitlyn was still in contact with her old boyfriend, and he was the last person to see her the night she died, Kaitlyn's parents say. Twice in her journals, Kaitlyn talks about suicide as a way to hurt him. On Valentine's Day, she wrote: ''I hope [the boy] kills himself. I would smile. If I get home and my friends are the same, like just blah, I'm going to hang myself. My suicide note will say this is because of [the boy] and I hope you kill yourself too . . ." But, while briefly hospitalized in late January, she had also written about killing herself if she was forbidden to see him. Kaitlyn's journal entries depict an oppressive relationship. To bolster her plan to break up, she wrote a list of ''Pros." They include: no control, laughing, not on phone 24/7, alone time, no more depression, parents off back, no feeling guilty, no lying, no checking up, and no more fights. And, underlined, ''BEING FREE!" Her journals also describe other problems. She was fighting with her parents about her boyfriend, and she was having trouble concentrating in school. She describes a high state of rapid-heartbeat anxiety as she faced tests she expected to fail and peers who might think ill of her. She talked in her journals of getting a tutor or some kind of home-schooling. In January, she described retreating often to the school walk-in center, where she felt comfortable with the school adjustment counselor, Meredith Poulten. Poulten, a former board member of the Samaritans, a suicide prevention group, respects the Kennedys' need for answers. The suicide of a child ''is the most devastating thing in the world," she said. At the same time, she said, specialists on suicide agree that in general, there are no simple answers: ''It's never one thing or one person -- it's usually a combination of anxiety, relationships, mental health issues, medications, and you add everything together and come up with a horrendous result." Continued... |
