Not Alone: How a group of Gold Coast teenagers avoided a suicide cluster

A group of devastated Gold Coast girls managed to avoid a suicide cluster following the death of their 15-year-old friend.

A group of teenage Gold Coast girls have prevented a suicide cluster after the death of their 15-year-old friend and now want to teach others what to do in a similar scenario.

Research by the University College of London showed that people under the age of 25 are more likely to be involved in a suicide cluster. It is described as a situation where more suicides occur than expected in relation to a time or place.

Mental health and suicide are not easy subjects to talk about, but news.com.au wants you to know you’re Not Alone. News.com.au’s Not Alone will raise awareness about these issues and provide you with the resources needed to reach out for help.

One of the ways the clusters commonly occur, the research explained, is through social transmission. This is when a person dies from suicide and it increases suicidal ideation in others.

There have been clusters involving teenagers across Australia in recent years with up to five people dying in the wake of one suicide.

Ally and Zahra as children.

A group of girls from Queensland’s Gold Coast were in this precarious position after the death of their childhood friend in 2018.

They have documented how they coped in the hope it helps others in a similar situation, creating a book and online resources.

Ally Shorter, 19, lost her childhood friend Zahra in 2018.

“I met her in grade two, in 2010, she was my first best friend. We were best friends for years, we did everything together – she was this good kind of crazy, outgoing, a really bright spirit,” she told news.com.au.

“I was quite shy and introverted and she was this spark of electricity – we balanced each other out.”

Ally said for the majority of her teen years she struggled with anxiety and depression. These sicknesses came to the forefront of her mind after Zahra’s death.

Ally now uses stress relief techniques to help her mental health.

“Zahra had moved to another school and she started to distance herself from our group of friends. I just kept asking her to hang out and she would just say she was busy,” she said.

“I never thought Zahra would get to that point. I knew she had struggled with depression.

“(Her death) was a tough time in my life, I felt a bit of guilt. Maybe I should have known? Maybe I should have reached out more, I would get full of this sadness and grief that she wasn’t here.”

The 19-year-old said she would be in a much worse place without the support of her friends and family.

In particular, she leaned on four of her closest girlfriends who were also part of a tight-knit group which included Zahra.

On the night Zahra was taken off life support the group of girls stayed up before going to watch the sunrise at the beach the next morning. They told their favourite stories about their friend through laughter and tears.

Luke Mathers asked Ally to help him write the book RESET

One of the girls in this group was Chloe Mathers. Her father, Luke, 51, was a successful businessman who transitioned into coaching professional athletes and corporate executives on how to deal with stress.

He explained that the support the girls, and their families, had helped prevent a suicide cluster.

“We all were just so adamant that we would pull the girls together. All the parents were the same we just made sure they knew they had each other and they had their families,” he said.

“It was just this thing where we were not going to let anyone go off on their own while they dealt with this.”

As the girls recovered, Mr Mathers helped with some stress relief techniques.

‘Reset is about what can I control, what can I alter and what can I delete?’

He thought that these techniques should be more widely accessible and asked Ally to help write a book that detailed how young people can deal with stress.

“The goal was to give a whole bunch of teenagers an opportunity to learn these new skills. It is an upstream solution for mental health issues,” he said.

“One of the techniques is called, catch, wait and reset. You catch the physical side of what you’re doing so that may be grinding your teeth. Wait stands for what am I thinking and why am I thinking this? And reset is about what can I control, what can I alter and what can I delete?”

The book RESET is available for free online and is dedicated to Zahra