"She's determined not to abandon them": A teenager's struggle in the province with the highest suicide rate in the country
Every time Luana has a rough day, a dry creak can be heard in her room, mixed with a high-pitched, metallic squeal. It's the sound she makes when she opens the chest she keeps on a piece of furniture in front of her bed, which she turns to when she needs motivation . It's made of dark wood and has an iron lock. On the side, the 18-year-old has a sticker that reads: " I am the change I want to see in the world ."
In that chest, Luana keeps her greatest treasure: handwritten notes from other teenagers. “ It encourages me to know that someone who went through the same thing as me has come so far, ” “ I went through that too, thank you for the conversation, ” or “ Your words helped me a lot ” are some of the messages she rushes to read when she feels insecure or needs an extra push to face the day.
Although those are the “nicest” to read, the ones that most recharge her desire to help the greatest number of teenagers in her province are others: “I need help”, “I get bullied a lot”, “Please talk to me” .
When she was in high school, Luana was bullied, had thoughts of death, and self-harmed . But Since the age of 14, he has been running “Te Espúcho,” a listening space aimed at teenagers. with which he goes to schools in his province, Catamarca. Specifically, he gives talks on issues such as bullying, depression, and suicide .
“ It gives me enormous joy to know that I can help another young person going through the same thing I did and prevent them from suffering ,” says Luana, who in the past found it difficult to talk about what she was going through. That's why, at the end of each of her presentations, she hands out slips of paper so that students can anonymously leave their phone numbers and ask her questions .
So, when he gets home, he schedules appointments with the kids who ask for help and chats with them for hours, days, even weeks, until he's sure they feel better or have contacted a professional .
Catamarca is the province with the highest adolescent suicide rate in the country. , according to the latest official data from the National Directorate of Criminal Statistics of the Ministry of National Security analyzed by the LA NACION Data team. In 2023, 14 children between the ages of 10 and 19 took their own lives, giving a rate of 20 adolescents per 100,000. This figure triples the national average , which in 2023 recorded 438 adolescent suicides, a tragedy that often goes unnoticed but has worsened in recent decades, according to a LA NACION investigation .
From the kitchen, while preparing the Milanese with mashed potatoes they will have for dinner that night, Cecilia, her mother, proudly watches Luana, who has been sitting at the table with her eyes fixed on her cell phone since she arrived.
" Luana's commitment and dedication to her project and to each of the young people who ask for her help fills my soul . She had me, but there are other children who don't have anyone or who don't know how to talk about what they're going through, and I know my daughter is determined not to abandon them ," says the 46-year-old woman.
For Luana, her mother is “her best friend.” She is a private economics tutor and has been supporting their household expenses in Valle Viejo, Catamarca, since her ex-husband left them when Luana was 7 years old. Every day they have breakfast together and chat about their upcoming day.
Luana's days are more or less the same: in the morning she works at her job in the youth department of the Valle Viejo Municipality ; in the afternoon she takes a bus and in 45 minutes she arrives at the National University of Catamarca, where she studies law. At night she goes to the gym. She returns home just in time to have dinner with her mother.
It's a different story when she has a talk scheduled at a school. That day, she's accompanied by a sense of nerves mixed with a feeling of hope. It's usually the student centers that contact her to speak. Last year, she spoke at three schools and, per talk, earned at least 20 slips of paper with questions from students. This year, she's already presented in front of hundreds of students and has school presentations scheduled for the entire year.
–What do people ask you the most?
–Behind the messages I receive are kids experiencing situations ranging from bullying to eating disorders or depression . I once received a question that said, “My way of overcoming what I was going through was to try to end my life. What can I do?” It also happened to me that, as the conversation progressed and I asked questions, they confessed that they had self-harmed or even attempted suicide. But, in general, the reason they come to me is because they feel they have no one to talk to about the situations they're experiencing, or they don't know how, or they don't dare to.
–What do you answer them?
There's something I'm very clear about, and one that my mom repeats to me every time I give a talk: I'm not a psychologist. On the contrary, I seek to be more of a bridge to professional help. That's why I encourage each of the kids who write to me to identify "their person." That is, that parent, friend, teacher, cousin they know they can confide in about whatever they're going through. And then, obviously, I emphasize the giant step and the enormous courage involved in simply sharing it.
–Do you think you’ve ever saved someone’s life?
–I like to think so. I mean, the truth is, I've received messages saying "you saved my life," but I don't know how literal they are. What I do know is that I've occasionally chatted with guys who were in really difficult situations. I've also received many messages saying "thank you for listening to me" or "thank you for not leaving me alone."
Although Te Escucho began as a social media project, its online presence has taken a backseat in recent years. “ I realized that going to talk to the kids in person allows for better communication . Reinforcing the message 'I'm here' with my physical presence seems key to making them feel confident enough to tell me anything ,” Luana says, adding: “When I stand at the front of the classroom and look the kids in the eye, I can tell by their expressions if they're lying, if they're embarrassed, if they seem sad.” And if she recognizes those looks, it's because they're the same ones she wore on her face a few years ago.
As a child, Luana was very close to her grandmother Carmela, who would take her out for ice cream every Wednesday without fail . “I admired how flirtatious she was. She always wore heels and silk outfits and loved her curly hair. It really struck a chord with me how much she suffered when she lost all her hair to cancer ,” explains the young woman, who, inspired by her grandmother, cut her hair to ear length during the first few weeks of her freshman year of high school to donate it to a foundation that made wigs for cancer patients .
However, all the joy her new hairstyle brought her was overshadowed by comments from her new classmates, ranging from "tomboy" to "flabby hair." And the excitement of starting a new stage at a new school and making new friends transformed into a feeling she'd never experienced before: "wanting to disappear from the world."
“Suddenly, that sparkle my daughter had faded,” her mother says. “ Luana had always been a hyperactive, cheerful girl, eager to try new things . She sang, danced, and was loud. Little by little, she began to get sadder, angrier, and more isolated ,” she adds.
Every morning, Luana put on her sequined backpack and hopped in the car to go to school. “She was always a straight A,” so she sat at the front, paid attention in class, asked questions, and wished the minutes would start ticking away. She knew that when recess came, even if she stayed in class, her classmates' horrible comments would cloud her mind, and she wouldn't be able to pay attention the next time she went because she couldn't stop thinking about them . Some days, she even locked herself in the bathroom and cried until her mom came to get her.
But Luana didn't want to be a burden on her mother, and the things people said to her embarrassed her, so for a long time she bottled up what she felt. "I insisted that she tell me, and then she started talking to me, choking on tears, and I cried too because it distressed me to see her like that, and we ended up hugging each other and crying," says Cecilia, who decided to take her daughter to a psychologist when she discovered she was self-harming .
“I still don't fully understand why I did it. I was a kid, and I don't really know what I was thinking. I haven't found an answer yet. It's like you feel so bad that you just do it , and I thought maybe it would be a solution, but luckily I realized it wasn't,” says Luana, who is now certain that talking it over with professionals and her mother was what saved her and pulled her out of that dark place .
Now, as proof that it is possible to move forward, Luana tells her story at the beginning of each of her talks : “Te Escucho helped me reflect because to tell who I am I have to tell where I come from and what happened to me .”
Te Escucho (I Hear You) began when, at the age of 14, a friend of her mother's sent Luana a link to a call for applications for the SOMOS program, run by the Ansenuza Leaders Foundation, which forms a network of young volunteers from across the country seeking to transform education. "She knew I'd always wanted to do something to change the world, and I said, 'Why not do something that no one else in Catamarca is doing? '" explains Luana, who never thought she'd be selected.
In addition, she managed to have her project selected for Tribu 24, an Ashoka Southern Cone initiative that seeks to connect young agents of change to consolidate a network that promotes positive impact in their communities .
Today, what worries Luana most is how normalized bullying has become , both among young people and among the authorities: “It’s been years and years of normalizing behavior that is cruel and that , as in my case, can lead to self-harm or even suicide . And the schools, at most, give the same generic, standardized talk that even I didn’t pay attention to . They don’t listen to the kids.”
Jenifer Lobo is 17 years old and the student body president at Secondary School No. 69, where Luana gave a talk two weeks ago. “Last year, we detected more than 10 cases of bullying. We at the school raised the need to talk more about the issue. And they followed through, and it worked. Now, at least as far as we know, there are only three or four cases,” the teenager says.
“Luana explains things very well, and the kids watched her with intense concentration. I think it's because she gives them valuable information that we don't usually get at school, and because when she tells her story, the kids empathize with her and gain their trust,” says Jenifer.
When she was a little girl, Luana dreamed of being a singer or an actress. She would turn any object into a microphone and imagine a crowd listening to her. And although no songs come out of her mouth, her stage is more like a classroom, and her listeners are high school students, in a way, something she once dreamed of came true: “A few years ago, I didn't see myself here. Being alive and contributing to someone else's desire to live is wonderful. I Hear You helped me heal that little Luana who was suffering and also made me realize that my life deserves to be my life, and my way.”
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