I work with adolescent boys who have HIV. Psychiatric intervention is not enough. Medication is not enough. You have to be there for the kid 24/7. Panic does not share our schedules. Panic does not share the school schedule. Suicide has its own agendas.

The idea that “if only, the teenager could talk to the doctor if the doctor would only ask” is denial. The kids I work with are far, far too suspicious. Anything they say or do can get them locked up somewhere.

One issue, especially concerning boys with HIV, that never gets addressed, would be sex and rape. There is a difference. The place where young boys are subjected to both the most would be detention. Does the kid who sells weed deserve to be raped. To him, sex, rape, and violence are co-dependent. We never put the idea of what criminal detention is in a dialogue of what rape and suicide as diseases thrive in, and particularly COVID where the infection rate is massive because the polite medical discussion about suicide prevention itself is aimed at white kids of privilege. The racial minority kid contemplating post-rape suicide in detention doesn’t figure in the white, patriarchal concept of what role institutions play.

You never read about anyone going near the issue of sex work in a pandemic. It is impolite to even assume that teenage boys do sex work. I am here to tell you that you are missing the forest for the trees. I have never met an adolescent prostitute who has not attempted suicide. No one is there for them.