As a suicide survivor, 16-year-old Eastlake sophomore Shavi Sikaria knows the battle many suicidal youth face.

Nearly a year after her suicide attempt, Sikaria’s mission is to call her community peers to action to deal with an issue that may be more common than some would like to admit.

Sikaria attempted to kill herself last April at Eastlake High School, taking 100 pills of pain relievers. Her physical recovery from the attempt lasted over two weeks. Now healthy and stable, Sikaria shares her story as a way of addressing teen suicide.

“I think people need to stop tip-toeing around the issue,” Sikaria said. “If it’s there, it’s there, and we are losing lives to it.”

One of Sikaria’s goals is to collaborate with community partners to create a local center for at-risk youth who need a safe place to go for resources like counseling or therapy. She notes that treatment can be expensive. Sikaria wants her center to be accessible to local people of all socioeconomic backgrounds.

Sikaria said she doesn’t hear much talk of suicide among her peers, but it will occasionally come up. She said it can be easy for high school-aged youth to become weighed down by their experience and not see that there is life after high school or focus on what is next.

“There’s a lot of pressure to do well in school and that can be putting you in a corner because it’s all about the GPA,” Sikaria said. “A lot of people talk about it that way, that they just feel put into a corner because they have to do well in school.”

The winter months after the holidays can be among the most trying times for people battling mental health issues. In January 2016, four suicide attempts were reported in the city of Sammamish, according to data provided by the King County Sheriff’s Office. This January, one suicide was reported, as well as two other suicide attempts.

Sarah Dochow, clinical director at CrossPath counseling and consultation, said her office sees an increase both in referrals and the severity of patient symptoms during the month of January.

“There’s a lot of factors that come together,” Dochow said. “A lot of people have stress around the holidays and there’s this slump of going back into work or to school. The weather doesn’t cooperate as well, there’s physical illness and there’s finals for students. All of that just really adds up and makes people feel down.”

To combat depression, Dochow encourages people to focus on taking care of their physical health and making sure to get enough rest, eat healthy foods and to exercise. She also encourages people to work on practicing mindfulness.

“A lot of times, mental health symptoms are about reliving things in the past or worrying about things in the future,” Dochow said. “And so we use a lot of mindfulness practices in therapy in order to help people come back to the present moment.”

Other tips Dochow recommends include working on implementing a daily structure, as well as finding an activity that one may particularly enjoy and incorporating it into their day.

Dochow said one of the most effective ways to battle mental illness is to get out and see people.

“I think my biggest piece of advice is that staying connected with other people is really helpful,” Dochow said. “I know sometimes that can be really difficult to do when you’re struggling with mental health issues, but it’s the one thing that time and time again, people bring up as being really, really helpful.”

Sikaria said she believes issues surrounding mental health would be easier to address without the stigma that usually comes with the subject. She added while sadness and depression may perpetually loom for those it affects, it isn’t permanent, even if it may seem like it is.

“I think a really important thing to consider is that there’s life after — the mood passes,” Sikaria said. “For a lot of people, the mood is really persistent and it stays and it makes you sad for ages. But if you work through it and you have a good therapist or a quality psychiatrist or you have a solid family support system, you have your team with you. If you don’t [have that], then that’s why I want there to be the community center, to provide the human support they need to get past their problems. I just want people to know that if you’re going through something, there are people out there that want to change this for you.”