Feature - Bridgend suicides: the real picture

To the media, Bridgend has become a kind of Welsh Twin Peaks, where young people devoid of hope come together online to plot taking their own lives. The Daily Telegraph described it as a "ghost town in more ways than one" before quoting a young person as saying: "When the first one happened I was shocked but now it just seems normal, fashionable almost. I don't know. It's that time of the year, isn't it?"

It is this kind of report that has enraged local people and Bridgend's youth council is planning to take action against the Telegraph. "We've all been hurt by the coverage," says Les Jones, children and young people's partnership co-ordinator at Bridgend County Borough Council. "It's made Bridgend sound like a place with no hope for young people." When asked what has caused the wave of suicides, Jones replies sadly: "We honestly don't know." The lack of easy answers has led the media to trumpet wild and colourful theories - suicide pacts, a youth work desert, mass deprivation and links to social networking website Bebo - that do not accord with reality, he says.