U.S. Congress passes teen suicide prevention bill

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The U.S. Congress on Thursday easily passed a bill to help prevent teen suicide, legislation named for a senator’s son who took his own life a year ago this week.

The legislation, which authorizes $80 million over three years for prevention programs and research, now goes to President George W. Bush for his signature. 

The bill is named in memory of Garrett Smith, son of Oregon Republican Sen. Gordon Smith. He killed himself in his college apartment one year ago on Wednesday, one day before his 22nd birthday.

He had suffered from bipolar disorder and, his father said in an astonishingly raw speech to the Senate earlier this year, felt “pain and despair so potent that he sought suicide as a release.”

The Senate passed the bill unanimously in July and the U.S. House of Representatives in a 352-64 vote approved a slightly different version. The Senate unanimously approved those changes later in the evening.

Smith said that when his son died “I felt the ultimate failure” but that his heart was also now “filled with joy” because the legislation would help other families and young people afflicted with mental illness and depression.

The bill encourages states to develop prevention strategies and identify what works best to prevent youth suicides. Grants would also be available to improve mental health services on college campuses.

More than 30,000 Americans kill themselves each year and suicide is the third-leading cause of death for people aged 10-24. In the few weeks since Smith introduced this bill, one other lawmaker, Kansas Republican Rep. Todd Tiahrt, also lost a teenage son to suicide. Luke Tiahrt was 16 years old.

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