Editorial: Getting help to distraught teens an issue that can affect anyone

This is the type of conversation we wish our politicians - national, state and local - had every day.

And the fact that it was about helping struggling youth in the community makes it all the more noteworthy.

"We literally said, "We need to do something,' " Lisle Township Supervisor Mary Jo Mullen said, recalling for Daily Herald staff writer Marie Wilson the conversation she had with Lisle village Trustee Marie Hasse. "Well, we're elected," Mullen said she told Hasse. "Now we can."

That discussion came following the suicide of a high school student in Lisle last fall. And while they originally thought a one-time symposium about the issues area young people face might be the answer, their plans have grown and now could be a major force in getting needed assistance and resources to help these teens navigate the world in which they live.

The aim is to "disrupt the journey to suicide," said Sarah Breithaupt, director of youth and family services for Lisle Township, which is joining with Downers Grove and Naperville townships to form the Youth in Crisis Coalition. The group will meet monthly to coordinate, link and disseminate resources already available to help teens.

Need to be convinced such an approach is needed? DuPage County had three teen suicides in 2014, 10 in 2015, three in 2016 and 10 again in 2017. Two more this year so far brings the total to 28 in the last five years.

"We want to reduce the stigma," said coalition member Jordan Esser, who is the community initiatives coordinator of the DuPage County Health Department. "There's no face of mental health. It can affect everyone."

Indeed, that's what Naperville mom Jennifer Pedley wants other parents to realize as well.

"I don't mean to be a wet blanket,' she told Wilson recently, "but this could be your kid."

Pedley knows. Her younger son Isaac took his own life at age 15 in April 2017. He was struggling adjusting to a new life in a new town and new school but did not show classic signs of risk, she said.

The Pedley family wants to help others, and they are working with MOD Pizza in Naperville by creating an Isaac pizza that will be sold this summer to benefit a mental health charity in his name. In fact, the pizza will be sold at all 355 MOD Pizzas across the country, as the chain has agreed to donate $50,000 to the JED Foundation.

"Being able to see that there's going to be an impact at this level is huge support for us," Isaac's father, Ken Pedley said. "To know that's going to have a ripple effect through the JED Foundation and across the country is incredible.

Incredible helps to describe the Pedleys, MOD Pizza and those two Lisle politicians who not only said but acted on, "we have to do something."