Ian’s Way was established after my beautiful 16 year old Ian Ezquerra took his life on 8/14/2019. As parents we did not see any warning signs nor did we necessarily know what those warning signs were. We didn’t even know that he was depressed.
After my son’s death, I was approached by a handful of kids telling me how my son helped them with their darkness. As beautiful as that sounds, we were saddened that no one was able to help my son. We then realized the power of teens talking amongst each other. That is when we thought of Free Group Counseling for Teens, mediated by a mental health professionals.
We want to educate our children on when to speak up, when to be concerned for their peers, when they themselves are in crisis, and give them tools and resources to handle life. Our Teen Group Counseling program will be called Talk Time. With social distancing a must, the talk time sessions will be online via zoom and moderated by a mental health professional.
In addition to the teens, we will have general information sessions. In these sessions do a variety of things, could be a presenter, inspirational speaker, or general talk about taboo topics.
Our number one goal is prevention. We want to prevent another child from taking their life, and prevent another family from experiencing our grief.
After a lot of investigating, we found that social media had a huge hand in our son’s death. Algorithms targeted our son and led him down a dangerous path of adrenaline seeking videos along with suggested friend requests from predators. Protect your kids by keeping them off of social media. I’d even recommend going back to dumb phones. LOL! I mean flip phones. Our kids are targeted through technology, and unfortunately safety hasn’t caught up yet.
