“It felt overwhelming and like I was alone. I just felt so, so low, I couldn’t see a way out.”<\/p>\n
Calleigh’s story comes as young people\u2019s charity, Childline, says it has carried out its highest number of counselling sessions with young people having suicidal thoughts and feelings, and needs more volunteers.<\/p>\n
A total of 22,456 sessions were given to children in the UK thinking about taking their own life in 2016\/17 – up from 19,481 the year before.<\/p>\n
In Calleigh\u2019s case, extensive pressure from a high-achieving school coupled with her own perfectionist nature, meant she sank to a very low point.<\/p>\n
But Childline literally proved to be a lifeline.<\/p>\n
“I was able to talk to someone,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
“I’d call them when I wanted to self-harm. I would message them – they’ve got amazing message boards.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are so many other people that are feeling the same way.”<\/p>\n
The brave young woman advised others and said it’s important to seek help – and to remember that there doesn’t always have to be a reason for feeling at breaking point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“To get to my school I had to cross a railway bridge and I would just stand there and think ‘I could just jump off\u2019\u201d, says Calleigh, now 18, who was self-harming when she was 11 and first thought about taking her own life when she was 13. “It felt overwhelming and like I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":24483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,38,112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-national-news","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}