My friend called to tell me his young daughter, age 25 ("almost 26," he added) had taken her life. "Killed herself." He said this quietly, as his life exploded around him.

Who could blame this anguished soul for skating around the slippery linguistic slopes of "suicide." Too hurtful to utter those three simple syllables. Too heavily layered with legal and criminal connotations. Too cold. Clinical.

Suicide conjures up ugly images: uniformed policemen, for one. Messengers of morbidity masquerading as community helpers, they confront hysterical mothers unable to remember their child's last conversation, last gasp of anger or last irrational action. Then come the bureaucrats who manufacture red-tape, all the while ripping the lid off the parental Pandora's Box. The bearers of bad tidings let loose a truth that forever extinguishes cherished hopes and dreams.

What would Elizabeth Kubler-Ross make of my friend's verbal evasion? Would she declare him to be in the first stage of grief, that is denial? But my friend seemed perfectly able to grasp that his child was dead. Then why, I ask, does he avoid the word suicide? Does "killing" (as he put it) or murder somehow sound better?

Not to my ears it doesn't. Hardly euphemisms, they do little to take the sting out of the unthinkable. No, it isn't denial in my friend's voice. What I hear, unbelievably enough, is shame mixed with apology--the need to distance oneself from behavior so distasteful that families would rather sweep it under the proverbial carpet than hold it up for the world to see and perhaps sympathize with.

Such is the embarrassing effect that stigma has. Despite attempts at education undertaken by schools, nonprofits and other organizations, suicide--especially among young people--has failed to find a secure spot in our national psyche. Unlike illnesses that attack teens and young adults, such as diabetes and asthma, severe depression with accompanying suicidal thoughts has not been emotionally legitimized.

Despite National Depression screening days and celebrity suicides, our minds are hardwired to avoid the pain of humiliation. The result? If we MUST discuss suicide, let's relegate it to a place on the health curriculum or, better yet, on an after-school TV special.

It's as if the information about suicide-the statistics, warning signs and such--is allowed to seep into society's collective conscious, but at the same time the concept of suicide is relegated to our brain's forbidden zone--that area reserved for other Western taboos, such as incest, child pornography and cannibalism. Teens receive mixed signals, as adults and educators struggle with unacceptable feelings.

"I don't want to think about it," parents silently scream. This kneejerk reaction against reality perpetuates romantic notions of the sweet, blissful joys of adolescence. And this misguided, self-protective mindset also permits parents to rationalize away the warning signs of suicide--even though they can reel them off as well as the other mantras of an enlightened population ("the seven warning signs of cancer," "the four symptoms of pregnancy," the "dos and don'ts of antibiotics").

No wonder that parents often attribute their kids' atypical behaviors--for example, hours spent alone in their bedrooms sleeping or listening to music--as benign signs of a passing phase. Even more blatant indicators--a drop in their child's grades or sudden bursts of tears or anger--can bounce off parents unprepared to admit that suicidal danger signals can be more than a theoretical construct.

Several years ago the Associated Press reported how an English teen, bullied by schoolmates who called her "fatty," announced to her parents that she couldn't stand the torment and intended to take an overdose of pills. The parents, who recognized their child was depressed, preferred to disbelieve her suicide threat. While her caring, loving parents slept one night the 13-year-old took a fatal overdose of painkillers.

True, that's an extreme case of a parent's failure to react to reality, but what about my friend? He was, thankfully, one of that small minority of parents who recognized their child had a serious problem. He and his wife took measures to resolve it. At the memorial service, I learned the daughter had tried suicide before.

She had stayed in reputable hospitals, seen competent psychiatrists and received state-of-the-art medications. Her mother, a special education teacher, had spent hours trying to bolster her self esteem. Her older sister supported and loved her dearly.

So did friends and co-workers. Her grandfather, a retired psychiatrist, did all he could to find professional assistance. And yet, she committed suicide--despite above average mental health treatment AND family support. Such is the power of mental illness to cloud judgement and obliterate hope.

If under almost ideal conditions, a young person still can fall through the mental-health cracks, what hope is there, then, for young people whose families are too fearful or sickened by the idea of suicidal ruminations to try to prevent the "dirty deed"?

What hope is there if the good fight against suicide must be fought against a powerful enemy bearing not only the weapons of overwhelming hopelessness and helplessness, but a stigma born of centuries of orthodox, puritanical, self-righteous religious and moralistic indoctrination.

Ironically, only days before my friend called, I had completed a freelance assignment on suicide for a teen health magazine. While researching, I interviewed parents of suicide victims, teens who had survived suicide attempts and adults and teen volunteers for suicide hotlines. Unlike most of the stories I write, I gave my interviewees the option of anonymity. The reason, I told myself, was that the subject is sensitive, private. Actually, my motives were not so pure.

If I were perfectly honest, I, like so many Americans, consider suicide a hush-hush subject--too embarrassing, too linked with failure, too indicative of character flaws and family dysfunction. Who would want to go on the record about a choice that right-to-lifers would call as much of an abomination as abortion.

In fact, most of my interviewees chose to remain anonymous. A few were adamant about it. The only person who allowed me to use her name was a teacher who had lost her child to suicide and believed in the media's power not only to educate but also to stamp out stigma.

Why is it that as a society we have grown to the extent that dying of AIDS is no longer equated with moral decadence and sexual perversion, but we still draw the veil over suicide? More and more I've noticed obituaries announcing the cause of death as AIDs. I have never seen an obituary stating the cause of death as suicide.

Thirty years ago, a college friend of my sister's committed suicide. No one suspected anything. No mention of her death was made at baccalaureate exercises or graduation ceremonies. Today, there would be counselors available at school campuses to assist students in coping with this tragedy.

So do not fault today's school counselors and educators. The large number of suicide-related books listed in Books in Print and located on school and public library shelves contradicts the popular belief that education is the ultimate prophylactic. It is not.

The statistics say otherwise. Suicide is the third leading killer of young people between the ages of 15 and 24, according to the CDC in Atlanta, and a growing trend among African Americans, whose suicide rate has tripled in the past 15 years.

Furthermore, 15 percent of all teens diagnosed with depression eventually commit suicide. A recent survey delivers even worse news: As many as one out of four high school students may seriously consider suicide.

If there's any good news, it's that a 100 percent fail-safe method for predicting teens likely to commit suicide may be just around the corner. But until this simple blood test is perfected, parents, relatives, friends and strangers need to do more than spout statistics and hide their shame behind checklists, hotline numbers and medications.

Although these measures are necessary to inform and treat, they don't stamp out the stigma. This is something we all must deal with by "coming out of the closet" and together exposing the pain of our own limitations, imperfections and self doubts.

Parents need to discuss suicide--not just on TV talk shows and in online support groups--but at family gatherings, religious functions and parent-teen workshops. We need to keep repeating the word "suicide" until the repetition rousts the shame and we're left with only the practical details of prevention and providing support for survivors.

Otherwise there will continue to be too many Arlyn Chastains, whose mother recently wrote how her beautiful, brilliant 17 year-old, slated to enter Tulane University, put a gun to her head and ended what could have been a long, rewarding life.

When my friend and his wife euologized their child at the memorial service, they spoke eloquently of her gifts and rare moments of happiness. The clergy man who attempted to give a few words of solace seemed ill at ease as were, I'm sure, many of the mourners, many of them parents.

Near the end of the service, the mother told how when her children were preschoolers, she and her two youngsters were caught outside one day in a windstorm. So like any good mother, she grabbed hold of her children's hands and held on tight. The older child, frightened of the wind's force, admonished her mother to hang on to the younger one because she might "blow away."

"I couldn't hold on to you," the mother said before the crowd of mourners, sobbing.

What parent, alone, can hold on when their child is under the eye of the hurricane called mental illness? But stigma can collapse under the weight of shared compassion. And one parent can join with other supportive parents as well as mental-health professionals, educators and clergy.

When society puts aside judgments, the chances of rescue improve dramatically. As Benjamin Franklin said more than two centuries ago, we must all hang together or we will all hang separately.

Dedicated to the memory of Dr. Janet Shaner, Superintendent of the Weston, CT School District. She was someonešs daughter too.

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