Alaska is number one in the country for youth suicide, according to numbers compiled by Alaska Public Health Analytics and Providence Hospital, and Alaska Natives are at highest risk according to a recent CDC study.
That study shows Alaska Natives and American Indians suffer more depression and cases of mental illness than any other group. Alaska Natives have long dealt with generational trauma, trauma that can begin before a person is even born and can be made worse through cultural influences or long periods of exposure to difficult home situations. Experts point out that difficult family situations are not unique to Alaska Native youth.
The Farrally family says they know this all too well, as raising their daughter hasn’t been easy.
“The anxiety, depression and then just the anger that she just doesn’t know how to control or deal with,” said Sonia Farrally, when speaking about her adopted daughter, Twilla. “She has scars up and down her arm from cutting.”
Farrally has been battling her daughter’s mental illness for years. Twilla was actually her niece and she adopted the child when she was just a baby. Born to alcoholic parents, Twilla was diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome.
“Body weight, height, all the things doctors look at for her growth, she was below the chart lines,” Farrally said. “She wasn’t even on the graph.”
Twilla’s odds were stacked against her from the start. As she grew, even the simplest things seemed like major obstacles.
“Try to get her to take a shower, she would go two or three weeks,” Farrally said. “Or try to get a change of clothes and she’d wear the same clothes for two to three weeks.”
Twilla’s biological family lived in the village of Crooked Creek. Farrally, half Alaska Native herself, says she turned to Native hospitals for help with Twilla, but had little luck.
Read more at AlaskaNewsSource.com.
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