MLHS seniors enlist students to battle suicide
Charles H. Featherstone/Columbia Basin Herald Moses Lake High School seniors Madison Kissler (left) and Marissa Hotchkiss (right) have started a club, Promise for Tomorrow, to help raise awareness about suicide and to provide a place where young people can seek help and support.
MOSES LAKE — Two young people aged 10 to 24 in the state of Washington kill themselves every week.
Another one out of five in that same group has considered suicide.
So two Moses Lake High School seniors — Madison Kissler and Marissa Hotchkiss — decided to do something about it.
“We’re starting a club, Promise for Tomorrow, about suicide prevention and awareness,” Kissler said.
“Over the summer, we lost a close friend to suicide. People came up, and said they were having a hard time, that they didn’t know if they wanted to live or not,” she added.
The two friends found themselves doing a lot of peer counseling — listening to friends, acquaintances and even strangers as they struggled with their lives.
“After we lost our friend, we went through things we didn’t know about,” Kissler said.
“No one’s taught us how to deal with suicide,” Hotchkiss added.
They prepared a little video, which they showed to the faculty as Moses Lake High School and then posted on YouTube, which talks about warning signs and explains ways to get help. They have silicone bracelets, which they gave to some faculty and members of the boys wrestling team, which say “It’s okay not to be okay” and bear the number of a suicide prevention hotline, 800-273-8255.
And they hope the club will be “a safe place to hang out.”
“Mainly a place to be yourself, and not hide anything,” Kissler said.
Leigh Allison-Ray, the club’s advisor and a counselor at MLHS, said the club was all Kissler and Hotchkiss’ idea.
“As a counselor, I see students constantly who have depression issues, so I see a great need, especially for peer support,” Allison-Ray said. “A lot of kids will turn to a friend rather than an adult.”
Hotchkiss and Kissler said that over 100 people signed up to help in the effort when they sought volunteers earlier this week. They are also working up a confidentiality code, to make sure that what peer counselors get told stays with them — unless someone’s life or safety is at risk.
“Someone confided in me, and asked me, ‘How do I help a friend?’” Hotchkiss asked.
While friends, the two young women are very different. Kissler has some very specific career ambitions — she wants to be a pediatric oncology nurse — while Hotchkiss “wants to see where life takes me now, I guess.”
But they both remain committed to helping other young people get through the roughest parts of life.
“We’ve been asked, and we’re reaching out to Frontier Middle School too,” Hotchkiss said.
Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com.
Become a Subscriber!
You have read all of your free articles this month. Select a plan below to start your subscription today.
Already a subscriber? Login
