When a friend told 16-year-old Sirena Cook she had considered suicide, Sirena told her how important it was she got counselling. Photo: Emily Smith / The Daily Mercury.

When a friend told 16-year-old Sirena Cook she had considered suicide, Sirena told her how important it was she got counselling. Photo: Emily Smith / The Daily Mercury.

YOU can't overstate the value of kindness.

Just look at Sirena Cook, who has shown how kindness can save a life, despite facing more tragedy in her 16 years than anyone should ever have to.

Over the past four years, her dad and 16 of her friends have all died by suicide.

"It's pretty sad to say that I'm getting used to it; the feeling," she said.

"There has been times when I wasn't going to continue."

But when a friend said she was contemplating suicide, Sirena talked to her about it directly.

"I just went over there, I got pretty much all the counsellors' cards I had, I gave them to her..," Sirena said.

"And just talk to them, just ask why and see if there's anything we can do. Just prevent it.

"She's okay. It helped her."

While suicide is a dark and complex issue, it is this willingness to be kind and connect with people that Sirena is certain can help.

"Just talk to the kids and find out how they're feeling," she suggested.

In Sirena's own experience, finding people to talk to has been difficult.

None of the "four or five schools" in Brisbane or Mackay she has attended were open to talking about the subject, even after a student's death.

"One of my schools I've been to we weren't allowed to talk about (a classmate's suicide). It wasn't allowed to be brought up in the school," she said.

"You're supposed to be talking to people to make them feel better but we weren't allowed to.

"Counsellors weren't going to talk about it."

That was in 2013.

Sirena is also worried about the way social media can be linked to suicide.

"There's no interference. You can just be going at and at someone and there's no one there to stop it," she said.

But she said reaching out to people, who she knew would show her kindness, was helping her start to feel better.

"People need more people that show that they care," she said.