New Hampshire needs a full system of care to support children with mental health concerns. One of the most important things we can do for our kids is to make mobile crisis services available everywhere in the state. Mobile crisis responds immediately when kids are in a behavioral health crisis, like when they are suicidal. They assess the child, resolve the immediate crisis, and help connect the children and families with supports.

Since their son died, Martha and Paul Dickey have had little time to pause. The two have held fundraisers, launched community walks, made bracelets, and spoken to groups across the state about Jason’s life and the cause of his death: suicide.

“We asked ourselves: What did we miss? What we could we have done to save him? Where did we go wrong?” Dickey said. 

Jason Dickey’s mother, Martha, remembers him as a fun and outgoing young man with a larger than life personality.

Yet he was consumed by despair so deep he took his own life on Sept. 14, 2017, at age 19.

The Boscawen teen was among 38 young people in New Hampshire who died by suicide that year in a state where the rate of youth suicide (under age 24) is nearly 50 percent higher than the national average and climbing.

Jason Dickey’s mother, Martha, remembers him as a fun and outgoing young man with a larger than life personality.

Yet he was consumed by despair so deep he took his own life on Sept. 14, 2017, at age 19.

The Boscawen teen was among 38 young people in New Hampshire who died by suicide that year in a state where the rate of youth suicide (under age 24) is nearly 50 percent higher than the national average and climbing.