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‘Teen Maze’ teaches suicide prevention

As in life, youth negotiate the perils of a fun quest to learn about the consequences of their decisions

When you’re a teenager, your life is at a crossroad. Should you finish high school? Go to college? Try drugs and alcohol? Have sex? At each intersection, you find yourself faced with a difficult choice. Right or wrong, these choices determine your path—your future. And sometimes there’s no turning back.

Teens draw a card to determine their “fate” in the Teen Maze.

A poster points out how to spot and help friends who might be considering a choice like suicide.

Kiwanians talk to teens about suicide prevention.

“The suicide station really made me think. I don’t want to leave my whole family and life behind.”—11th-grader, River Valley High School

Fortunately for more than 2,000 teens in Bullhead City, Arizona, the Kiwanians of the Southwest District’s Division 15 are there to give directions.

This past May, the six clubs of Division 15 united under the banner of teen suicide prevention. Led by 2005-06 lieutenant governor Nate Hurt, the clubs staffed a suicide prevention booth and distributed US$1,600 worth of Kiwanis “Together We Can” gel bracelets at a “Teen Maze” in Mohave High School.

Developed in the 1990s, the Teen Maze program teaches young adults, through an interactive simulation, to lead a healthy lifestyle and understand the possible consequences of their decisions. As if pawns in a live board game, Teen Maze participants draw cards to determine their paths through the maze. Depending upon which cards are drawn, participants visit booths that educate them about pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, drug and alcohol addiction, suicide, and graduation from high school.

Bullhead City Morning Kiwanis member Judi Reed, also a Colorado River Union High School District official, brought the Teen Maze to Mohave High School and helped organize the two-day event.  When 2005-06 Southwest District governor Bobbi Verdin unveiled teen suicide prevention as the 2005 district project, Judi and her Kiwanis colleagues immediately embraced the project, selecting it as the focus of the Kiwanis booth.

Mohave Mesa Area Kiwanis member Maria Pynakker coordinated the Kiwanis booth. 

“When I decided to participate in this event, I never realized what an impact it would have on me,” she says. “We had recently lost a student—a young adult—to suicide, and having to deal with that as well as starting to work on suicide prevention opened my eyes up to the youth and this problem.

“I am very proud to be a Kiwanian who promotes suicide prevention.”

The booth was a success. Kiwanians identified one student who appeared to be considering suicide and brought in a trained expert from Teen Life Line of Phoenix to talk with him.

“Saving that one child made a difference,” says Nola Charles, Division 15 lieutenant governor-elect. “How many others we helped we probably will never know, but I believe they are there.”

Since the event, the Teen Maze and suicide prevention programs have already expanded.  Upon request, Maria and 15 others staffed a teen suicide prevention booth at a Colorado River Indian Tribes event in June, and Kiwanians throughout the Southwest District have been in contact with Maria and Nola to determine how they might implement the programs in their areas.

“I truly believe many clubs can and will take this on—both the Maze and teen suicide prevention—and they will make a difference in their communities,” Nola says. “We want everyone to know we are here to lend a helping hand if they need us to get a project going.”—Morgan Ellen Estabrook