Your headline, “Isle bullying on par with U.S.” (Star-Advertiser, Nov. 1), was incomplete.

Rather than congratulating ourselves for having the same rate of bullying as the rest of the country, we should be very concerned that our teen suicide attempt rate is significantly higher than the rest of the country (10 percent versus 7.4 percent).

That’s one in 10 — or three in every classroom — of our high school students being so desperate that they want to die. This is not mentioned until the 11th paragraph, and then only gets one paragraph of a lengthy article. Suicide is the leading cause of death of young people age 18-24 in Hawaii, whereas the rest of the country it is the second- leading cause.

One of the reasons for your silence — and our community’s — is the stigma and shame associated with suicide. Perhaps in the future you might want to write about suicide prevention, highlight some successful approaches, and mention that we need to focus much more on preventing suicide, especially among our young people.

Marya Grambs

Kailua

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