Grieving Illinois mother fears scolding she gave daughter, 10, may have driven youngster to hang herself

A grieving mother tries to understand why her 10-year-old daughter committed suicide.

Harmony Rose Washington, a fourth-grader at Prairie Trails Elementary School in Chicago, committed suicide after hanging herself from a tree in front of her home on February 20, a few days after her 10th birthday.

Her mother, 36-year-old Mayolita Gaines, was planning Harmony’s birthday party when she made the horrific discovery.

Seven months later, she still can’t come to terms with her daughter’s death and wonders about Harmony’s mental health.

There were no warning signs that Gaines’ “friendly and cheerful” girl was struggling.

She had been reprimanded for making disrespectful comments about her uncle, Gaines told the Chicago Tribuneand the family thought she had gone to her bedroom.

Around 9:20 p.m., while Gaines was on the phone with Harmony’s father, who is in custody, several of her other children began screaming for her attention.

“They were screaming. The way they were screaming — it was like someone was being murdered when they were calling my name,” she said.

“My oldest came in and they were just screaming, ‘Mama, mama, mama.’ You can hear the pain. You can hear the pain. You can just hear everything in ‘mama.'”

The children found Harmony’s limp body hanging from the tree in front of their house.

While someone brought her down and brought her inside, most of the evening from that point on became a blur for Gaines. She remembers calling 911 while other family members performed CPR.

About an hour later, Harmony was officially pronounced dead at the hospital.

Gaines is still trying to figure out what Harmony’s motive might be.

Looking back, she wonders if she was struggling with her father’s incarceration, or if she was inspired by something she saw on social media.

Gaines wonders if her daughter “maybe wanted attention,” or if she was pushed over the edge by bullying at school or the argument they had that night.

“I may have thought of so many things, but we’ll never know,” Gaines said.

“As parents, we don’t know that we’re doing anything wrong. We think everything is OK. I’m learning now that I try to yell less because I know it can be a trigger for them.”

The mother of seven said Harmony’s favourite subject at school was math and she loved swimming and the beach.

The mother of seven said Harmony’s favorite subject at school was math, and she loved swimming and the beach

There were no warning signs that Gaines’ “friendly and cheerful” girl was struggling

According to Dr. Aron Janssen, a psychiatrist at Lurie Children’s Hospital, suicide is the second leading cause of death among children ages 10 to 14 in Illinois.

It is a crisis caused by a lack of research, funding and infrastructure to provide mental health care to such young children.

“I think part of it is because many of the interventions and processes that we use to screen for suicide were originally designed for older adolescents and adults,” he said.

He added that it used to be “historically a very rare event” for such young children to commit suicide, but that it is now becoming more common.

Only 10 percent of young people disclose their plans, while only 20 percent are considered depressed at the time of death.

“For a lot of kids, suicide is an impulsive act. It’s not something that a lot of these kids think about and plan for in a structured way,” he said.

“There was something overwhelming at that moment, and you have access to resources that are lethal.”