With a stag­ger­ing 1,029 deaths by sui­cide record­ed with­in the last decade in T&T, new­ly-crowned beau­ty queen Chelsea Dookhie plans to vis­it schools to speak on raise aware­ness on the is­sue with the hope that she could save lives.

Dookhie, 16, a low­er six pupil of St Joseph Con­vent in San Fer­nan­do, was crowned Miss Teen Aware­ness 2018, on No­vem­ber 10.

Par­tic­i­pat­ing as Miss Table­land, Dookhie copped sev­er­al pre­lim­i­nary awards in­clud­ing Miss El­e­gance, Best In­ter­view, Best Pas­sion Project, Best Evening Gown and Best Tal­ent, among

Dur­ing an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Dookhie said she planned to use her am­bas­sador­ship to re­verse the trends of de­pres­sion and sui­cide among the young peo­ple of T&T.

With the in­creased use of so­cial me­dia, Dookhie said cy­ber-bul­ly­ing was be­com­ing more preva­lent in the na­tion’s schools. She said peer pres­sure had in­ten­si­fied trig­ger­ing iso­la­tion, de­pres­sion and sui­ci­dal thoughts.

As part of the na­tion­al beau­ty pageant, Dookhie said she did ex­ten­sive re­search on sui­cide and was alarmed at the preva­lence of the scourge in T&T. She said many ter­mi­nal­ly ill peo­ple, in­clud­ing can­cer pa­tients, had no will to live be­cause of their med­ical con­di­tion.

“I have part­nered with Smara Can­cer Sup­port and I want to as­sist in rais­ing funds for can­cer pa­tients. I al­so plan to vis­it schools and speak to my peers about bul­ly­ing and sui­cide,” she said.

Dookhie al­so said it was im­por­tant not to iso­late peo­ple who were suf­fer­ing from de­pres­sion.

“We all have to help each oth­er. I want to en­cour­age this by host­ing my own events. It bleeds my heart to know that so many peo­ple are suf­fer­ing in our coun­try,” she added. She not­ed that the eco­nom­ic down­turn and the in­crease in un­em­ploy­ment had ex­ac­er­bat­ed the prob­lems in so­ci­ety.

Dookhie al­so said she al­so want­ed to lob­by for leg­isla­tive changes so that peo­ple who at­tempt sui­cide will not face charges but in­stead will get help.

Dookhie’s par­ents—To­taram and Ter­ryann Dookhie‚—ex­pressed pride in their daugh­ter’s achieve­ments say­ing she was able to suc­cess­ful­ly jug­gle her aca­d­e­mics and her pageant com­mit­ments.

Apart from her re­cent crown­ing, she al­so at­tained nine Grade Ones in her Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate ex­am­i­na­tions.

Dookhie said she trained for the pageant over a four-month pe­ri­od and apart from learn­ing how to mod­el, pose and smile, she al­so learnt the val­ue of dis­ci­pline and punc­tu­al­i­ty.

She ex­tend­ed grat­i­tude to her par­ents, pageant di­rec­tor Ti­m­on Oli­v­ere and her gu­ru of dance Michael Sal­ick­ram for her suc­cess.