Youth Suicide Prevention Initiative

A family friend just told my mom this and I thought I'd share it. Everyone knows about IQ (the "Intelligence Quotient") and EQ (the "Emotional Quotient"), but there is actually a third quotient that very few people know about, even though it is arguably the most important out of the three. It's called AQ (the "Adversity Quotient") - essentially, the higher it is, the higher the individual's tolerance for adversity is. So by this definition, those people who occasionally make newspaper headlines because of their incredible abilities to overcome the odds would have very high AQ's. I remember reading about one very inspirational young woman during my sophomore year of high school, who was accepted to Harvard even though she was homeless and was born to a teenage mother. (In fact, I even wrote a poem as a tribute to her that is currently in my port - the original news article about her is linked in the item.) That story proved one thing to me: encountering seemingly harsh or negative experiences have the ability to increase people's AQ's, but only if they are handled properly.

There's no way to guarantee a perfect life because everyone encounters many significant hardships. But what ultimately makes the difference between an average person and an outstanding person is their ability to handle those hardships. After having been through some pretty severe episodes of depression, I've emerged with the conclusion that whatever does not kill me only makes me stronger... but with one catch. In order NOT to let those hardships affect me to the point where I want to commit suicide, I should take an aggressive approach (instead of a passive one): either seeking out resources for helping to cope with the pain, or figuring out a solution to lessen it. By doing that, my tolerance for adversity, and thus my AQ, will also be increased, because whenever I find myself in a similar situation later, I will know what to do since I've gotten out of it before.

I don't consider myself to be "at risk" anymore, and I probably never will be again in the future thanks to some wonderful people and some wise choices I made for myself. But I would encourage whoever's reading this to treat every difficult situation as a learning opportunity. I did that, and it's made such a difference for me.