Nunavut teen's science project on suicide crisis surprises judges with statistics

A 15-year-old Nunavut girl who did a schoolproject on the territory's suicide crisissays it's time for people to open up about the sensitive issue.

Kimberly Tanuyakfrom Chesterfield Inlet says not talking about suicide is just making the problem seem even bigger than it is, so for herscience project shedecided to research what age group of people has the highest rate ofsuicide in Nunavut.

The student at Victor Sammurtok school won in her local science fair competition and went on to compete at the Kivalliq Regional Science Fair in Naujaat last month.

She says she was surprised by the results of her research.

"I was expecting it to be the higher age group in between 20 and 30 but it was actually the age group between 15 and 19," she said.

"Presenting that here in Chesterfield and in Naujaat, even the judges were surprised because everybody thought that it would be the higher age group."

Tanuyak says she faced some opposition from people who didn't want her to do the project but she says it's been a good learning opportunity.