As a parent, that mother's story is horrific. I couldn't imagine the pain of something like that. Not just because her son died, but there's no way she doesn't somehow blame herself for how he turned out (as I know I would).
Moving one, there's is something to be said for the effect of expectations. The data shows that you don't see the same levels of mortality rise in any other population. Simply put, us minorities don't have a false narrative of the American dream instilled in us and therefore don't expect to achieve it. We don't experience suicidal disappointment in ending up in a dead end job because our role models (parents grandparents) are statistically likely to have held those kind of jobs.
Personally I hate "white privilege" as a trope, but it does speak to something real: minorities, until very recently, were largely locked out of the American dream (as white people know it). The wealth of white households was 13 times the median wealth of black households and 10 times the wealth of hispanic households[1]. Numbers don't get like that over night. They are the result of generations of discrimination and institutional systems designed to exclude and screw with people that were not white. The point I'm making is that the average white person today probably doesn't even realize that, relative to other groups, their expectation of what a "nice" life is is basically seen as unattainable for others. Hence, we (POC) don't kill ourselves because we failed to reach the unattainable.
As the economy, and society, has diminished the ability for many whites (especially in rural areas) to take vantage of their "privilege" and they're forced to play the same game as the rest of us, they find themselves feeling like failures right out the gate and aren't quite sure why - hence the anxiety and subsequently despair.
The answer to this is not that white folks "check their privilege" - although it would help to stop being in denial about it and the effects it has on them and their expectations. The answer is to realize that rugged individualism is just a myth. In no other culture is this myth so central, and now so damaging. Despite what their parents and grandparents, and TV shows and movies have taught them, their relative success is not due to how much tougher they are than other folks and America is not, and has never been a meritocracy.
At this point, white America can continue to believe this rubbish at their own peril. Support policies that acknowledge people need other people and we will, evidently, kill ourselves if we go at everything alone as "rugged indivduals" unless the game is rigged in our favor (even if we don't realize it).
1: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/12/racial-wealt...