Trouble in an Affluent Suburb

Behavior

Teen-age suicides galvanize a New Jersey community

Hours after the burial of Jeffrey Hunter, 16, four of his classmates at Ridgewood High School sat talking about the death. Why had Hunter hanged himself? Suddenly, Christopher Mathieson, also 16, rose, said he had something to do and sped home on his moped. Sensing trouble, the other students ran to Mathieson's house. They found him hanging in a stairway closet.

Jeff and Chris are the third and fourth Ridgewood, N.J., youngsters to die by their own hands in the past 18 months. The suicides sent shock waves through the affluent suburb (pop. 27,500), only 20 miles from Manhattan. Students cried unashamedly in school halls and embraced each other. A school official broke down during an interview. Bewildered parents repeatedly asked, "Why is it happening here?"

Actually, the deaths could have happened almost anywhere in the U.S., where the rate of suicides among teen-agers has been rising in recent years. But what distinguishes Ridgewood is the community's spirited reaction to its tragedy. Immediately after the news of Mathieson's death, school officials worked through the night to map a strategy for dealing with the crisis. School Superintendent Samuel Stewart realized that he had two options: he could react dramatically to the community's grief by canceling classes, holding a school assembly or undertaking some other large new program, or he could underplay the deaths for fear that such public activity might trigger more suicides.

Taking the muted approach, Stewart and his staff convened all 107 high school teachers at 7:15 a.m. and urged them to break the news to small groups of students during homeroom periods. "We decided not to interrupt school routine in any way," he said. During the day, the school's seven guidance counselors, joined by 15 Ridgewood clergymen, set up desks around the high school, offering counseling to any students who wanted it.

Nearly half of the 1,600 high school students immediately asked for help. Says School Psychologist Abe Matus, who saw 50 youngsters: "There was a sense of helplessness and anger at the dead boys-'How could they do this to me?'' But Matus feels that the healing process has already taken hold. "If a kid is in trouble, word now gets back to us. A lot of trust between faculty and students has been built up." Many of the youngsters seemed to need assurance that they would not kill themselves. Says School Social Worker Robert Klopfer: "Even though they had no real intention of committing such an act, the boundaries between thoughts and actions are blurred under such circumstances. Many kids were frightened."

Officials are attempting a "psychological autopsy" of the two dead youths, since, on the surface, there seems no satisfying explanation for the suicides. Mathieson was a moody loner, some of whose troubles were known to school counselors. Hunter's suicide was more baffling: a gregarious athlete, he seemed to be happy and functioning well. Though they knew each other, the boys were not close friends.

Many school and community leaders think that extensive press coverage of the Jonestown massacre may have played a role in the deaths. Others see a deeper malaise. They talk of a workaholic climate in Ridgewood's school system, which sends 80% of its graduates on to college, many to first-rank universities. "The pressures are high," says Richard Roukema, chief of psychiatry at Ridgewood's Valley Hospital. "You add to that a high divorce rate and a high number of dead marriages, and you see a lot of youngsters in isolation, not relating to their parents."

The Rev. Steve Boehlke, 30, director of youth fellowship at Ridgewood's West Side Presbyterian Church, agrees. "These kids feel they have to look out for themselves because no one else will. It's a very lonely experience." To break through that psychological barrier, Boehlke is forming a new group, a fellowship of adult church members who want to learn how to relate to their children. Eighty parents came to the first meeting.

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