Mourning students likely to turn to Facebook, not counsellors: psychologist
Last Updated: Tuesday, September 11, 2007 | 2:57 PM AT
CBC News
As a Moncton high school mourns four students this week, a local child psychologist says more young people are turning to the internet to express their grief.
Police say four 16-year-olds were in a car following another vehicle on Ammon Road Saturday night. The car attempted to pass the vehicle on a solid-line stretch of road and on a blind hill and collided with a pickup truck coming the other way.
School district officials say Jimmy Dunphy, Brandon Hupman, Corey Doucet, and Jared Storey left lots of friends to mourn their deaths. Many students at Harrison Trimble High School are visiting the site of the latest accident where a makeshift memorial has been set up.
"Everyone knew these four boys like brothers, so it was painful and gloomy and you couldn't be there without being teary-eyed," said Jessica Richard, a student at the school.
"They have grief counsellors there at the school, but no one really wants to talk to them," Richard said Tuesday.
As well, hundreds of messages, pictures and other tributes have been posted to several websites established in honour of the dead boys.
Many students are also visiting internet sites like Facebook, which psychologist Charles Emmrys of Emmrys, Dawe, Bates and Associates said are supplanting face-to-face encounters with trained counsellors such as those brought in by the school.
Emmrys said the online environment helps students share their deepest feelings in times like these, especially if they're communicating in a group.
"You can express the emotions that you have with a lot more honesty, with a lot more clarity."
But Emmrys said there's a potential downside to the internet community. In the highly charged emotional environment following the deaths, students may post words they later regret.
Funeral services will be held Wednesday for three of the teens.
This is the second time students at Harrison Trimble have been coping with death in the past three months.
Satara Steeves, 14, died on July 27 when she was hit by a car.
