Khomasdal teenager commits suicide

A DORADO Park family is struggling to come to grips with the suicide of 17-year-old Curtis Bok at his family home.

The teenager allegedly shot himself in the mouth with his father’s gun in the bathroom at about 19h00 on Tuesday evening. Bok, a Grade 10 pupil at the Windhoek High School, was being treated for depression, but was considered a gregarious and intelligent child. His father, Nicky Bok, said his son, who had a learner’s licence, had earlier in the day crashed into a neighbour’s car. Curtis Bok went into the house and when his brother started looking for him, he found the safe in which his father kept a gun wide open. Bok was already dead by the time the family found him in the bathroom. The family said they did not hear a shot go off, presumably because Bok had closed the bedroom and bathroom doors.There have been several other seemingly incomprehensible suicides in Windhoek this month.Triple tragedy struck when three men – two brothers and a cousin – committed suicide in a matter of two weeks. Josef Cloete (41) hanged himself using an electric cord in the corrugated shack he was renting at the back of a Katutura home in Damara location on IgnatiusLoyola Street on June 4. Before his funeral took place, Cloete’s 27-year-old brother Adriaan, out from prison to attend the funeral, hanged himself in a riverbed using a similar electric cord.The two brothers were buried on July 16, a day when tragedy struck again when their cousin, Reinhard Thomas, believed to have been in his late 30s, went home from the funeral and hanged himself at his home in Okuryangava. Thomas will be buried in Windhoek this weekend. Clinical psychologist Shaun Whittaker says these incidents are extremely disconcerting, especially for a country with a small population such as Namibia. Moreover, he says, they are traumatic not only for the families of the deceased, but for society as a whole. These apparently copycat suicides, he says, send a message to relatives that suicide is an acceptable way out of a difficult situation instead of trying to find a constructive solution. Whittaker says people usually commit suicide when they emerge from the depths of depression, when they have just enough energy to take their lives.He says suicide among teenagers is usually triggered by relationship and examination stress, often coupled with depression. Suicide is thus often viewed as a way to stop emotional pain.’They do not necessarily want to die, but they do not fully understand the permanency of death,’ says Whittaker.He advises that Namibia should very seriously consider intervention measures, especially in view of the fact that the country has an above-average suicide rate. In 2008 and 2009 the suicide rates were 21,5 and 22,7 per 100 000 people respectively. The world average suicide rate is 16 per 100 000 people. A memorial service for Bok was held last night at the family home. Another service will be held at 165 Antilia Street, Dorado Park, at 19h00 tomorrow. Bok will be buried at the United Congregational Church in Khomasdal on Saturday morning.