… “It’s clear to me that the question of suicidal thoughts and behavior in this age group has certainly come up far more frequently in the last decade than it had in the previous decade,” said Dr. Marsha Levy-Warren, a clinical psychologist in New York who works with adolescents. “Cultural norms have changed tremendously from 20 years ago.” …
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/04/health/suicide-adolescents-traffic-deaths.html
Pretty interesting article, although the comparison to auto accidents is misleading when you read that they’re speaking primarily of pre-teens. Fortunately the rate is still rather low…under 2 per 100,000, although it surprises me that its even that high in that age group.
This is so very sad and worrisome. The article states that self-injury is also on the rise in preteens (10 to 14 yos). The article also states that more preteens are on anti-depressants, but does not discuss whether the suicide rate is higher or lower in those kids.
Social media is blamed in the article, but it can be helpful to lonely kids as well. Kids that can’t find community IRL may find it online. The negative, of course, is online bullying and the feeling of being left out when a kid sees photos of all the other kids having fun when they were excluded.
Indeed, but not surprising since many journalists are stats-challenged.
(Hint: deaths from auto accidents have declined ~25% in the last decade. Safer cars, less driving, etc.)
I’ll be honest, when I hear of a young person’s death and they haven’t been sick, my first thoughts go to suicide these days. I seems like its more common but it also seems like families are more willing to be open about the cause of death these days, something I’ve seen locally with heroin deaths as well.
I am sure social media has something to do with it, but I think a lot of it is the increasing pressure on teens these days, the workload in school, the pressures to do the right thing to get into a ‘good school’ and so forth, plus young people face something these days we didn’t face, there is so much more pessimism about the future now, real or perception. Suicide rates in cultures where young people traditionally are under a lot of pressure routinely have suicide rates above global norms (Korea is one example). I am not saying there is one factor, but I am 100% certain that the load that is being placed on kids these days is at least part of it, if a lot of it.
But this article focuses on 10 to 14 yos, so academic pressure is probably not as significant as it is in HS students.
Self-cutting is an incredibly common “coping skill” nowadays. I see few suicidal teens who are stressed out by the “load” on them. Just the opposite is the case in terms of traditional ideas about load. Most, but certainly not all, are products of incredibly dysfunctional families which leads to inability to cope with routine relationship issues. Substance abuse doesn’t help.
I just want to stress, as WISdad23 mentioned, that not all cases are due to dysfunctional families. My sister’s family is intact and healthy, but it didn’t stop her son from dying by suicide at 20.
The comment that the preteens are not subject to academic pressure is unfounded. the public schools have those darn tests. The tests are used by government to reward or punish schools, principals, and teachers. The pressure starts in Kindergarten with inappropriate levels of homework. They are bubbling in “homework” to practice for the tests starting then. In Kindergarten there are already pages of math and writing assignments. Kids are kept out of recess for not finishing this “vital” homework, adding to a miserable life. The HW is clearly designed to ensure maximum results on the standardized tests, as the kids use actual scantron cards. It’s as if the entire public school system is standing on the shoulders of 6, 8, 10 year old kids. Again those tests are what’s used to fund an entire school and its programs. Those tests are used to reward or deny teachers’ tenure and principals tenure and promotions.
Add in the parents with the helicopater rotors thwapping around the ceiling: OMG Suzy got a B!
No wonder there’s a rise in cutting in teen years, as soon as they can access sharp objects.
Agree MaineLonghorn. I know two families touched by suicide of a kid (older than preteen) and both were intact, fully functional families. There may have been some issues, but nothing out of the ordinary.
The article did not mention academic pressure as a key factor. Of course there is some, but in most cases nothing like what HS kids are subject to.
@mom2and disagree emphatically. It depends on where you are. In places where there’s school choice (and remember this is a clarion call from some government entities, that school choice should be the norm) the kids MUST compete as if they are in college from the age of Pre-K.
If you have school choice, as is the case in NYC since the 1970s, then the schools are competitive. The “best” grammar schools weed kids out at age 4. The best middle schools, well the kids’ have to perform on state exams in grade 4 as if they are their SATS–because that’s how middle schools treat them. Once they make the minimum cut, then they are allowed to formally appl, like for college. They have to interview, like for college. Then they wait for the results months later in the spring, like college.
Ditto for high school. With about 600 high schools and 75,000 kids competing for places each year, this starts in 7th grade. My child didn’t miss a day of school that year, because that’s one criterion that her (not my) target school weighed heavily. Attendance is considered a marker of how committed you are to school. It is an easy way for schools to ding people. This means that the entire family has to sacrifice that year to ensure perfect attendance, like you can’t attend weddings across the country. Her particular school has about 17,000 applicants each year for 700 seats. Do the math to figure out that the acceptance rate is far lower than for Yale or Harvard, at 4%
The bad news is if you have a kid who doesn’t have the stamina for this. The good news is if you do and your kid comes out a gladiator and is ready to tackle anything.
I have one of both. The one who wasn’t cut out for this went to the lowest prssure schools there were, and the pressure was still so intense that he is now officially taking a gap decade.
My kid who achieved (with like zero help from mom because I was rather done with this system because of first child) her ambition of attending the 4%-admission-rate high school, she feels battle ready for college and her ambition of premed. Let’s call her beloved high school Nutterton. She said to me, when I was cautioning her to maybe reconsider premed because it’s so competitive, she said: “Mom, I got into Nutterton didn’t I? I can do this.”
These are kids who literally grow up from pre-k under the pressure that your child feels only in high school.
If you or your community opts for school choice, this is what you will deal with.
A couple of points: the article was focused on the young edge of suicide. It has been the rule that pre-pubertal suicide is very rare. But increasingly younger kids are showing up suicidal so the article talks about the 10-14 year old age group.
If a 10 year old is upset and threatens to kill himself, what do you do? Should you consider it a credible threat? Should you put him in the hospital? What if he refuses? It is much more difficult to hospitalize a child below age 14 than it is older kids. There has been a massive reduction in child and adolescent psychiatric hospital beds over the last 20 years. Child (<14 yo) beds are pretty rare in most places. Younger kids seem much more comfortable threatening to act out as well
My earlier comments were aimed more at older adolescents, 14-18. Of course, not all kids who are suicidal come from dysfunctional families. But you would be surprised at the dysfunction underlying “perfectly normal families” in many cases. Even so, most of the kids hospitalized for suicidality have experienced a lot of dysfunction and are becoming old enough to propagate dysfunction of their own.
A paradox in suicide prevention is that many people who succeed at suicide are unhelpable. They keep it to themselves and are not overtly desirous of change. On the other hand, few people who threaten to kill themselves (and are therefore identifiable) actually do so.
^So true about the people who succeed at suicide. That was certainly true of my nephew. NO warning signs, even in hindsight, talking to many of his friends, family, and church members.
I heard a lecture given by a police officer who patrolled the Golden Gate Bridge for quite a few years. He successfully talked a lot of people off the bridge and wrote a book about it. I talked to him afterwards, and he said that in his experience, it was the younger people who walked up to the edge and jumped off without hesitation. He hated that, because he never had a chance to save them. 
We are painfully aware of the high suicide rate in CO, especially including the young people. Gun culture makes an attempt permanent rather than iffy and ‘I changed my mind’.
“Gun culture”, whatever that is, relates to suicide about as much as “bridge culture” would relate in the post above. Some suicidal people are more determined than others and use more lethal means. That is especially true of young males. Of course, the means used in successful suicide attempts are by definition going to be more lethal means. A person taking 5 capsules of Prozac versus another person taking a bullet to the head is in a different mental place.
People in the UP of Michigan, a place known for gun culture, disagree that gun culture isn’t a significant part of the astronomical suicide rates.
http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2016/09/love_of_guns_a_key_factor_in_n.html
@WISdad23 :
Successful suicide attempts are overwhelmingly by gun, half of all successful suicides are by guns, and what makes that stat so large is that 85% of attempted suicides by gun are successful (ie guns are quick and lethal) whereas something like 5% are successful by OD. The thing about a gun as an instrument of suicide is it is quick and easy, in a moment of despair, you grab the gun , put it into your mouth or on your temple, and pull the trigger, you can do that before you have the chance to think…whereas to jump off something, you have to get there, you have to climb onto a rail or whatever, look down at the height (instinctive reactions to height alone determ some suicidal people)…you od, you have to have the right drugs in the right amount, take too much you likely will puke it up…and so forth…and something like 2/3rds of gun deaths are suicides. It also doesn’t take a genius to figure out that in places where guns are commonly kept, it is a lot easier to kill oneself with one, especially with young people where guns are in the house.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/spr08gunprevalence/ The chart on this page shows that the states with the least amount of gun ownership have the least amount of gun suicides, and that isn’t surprising, for the reason I originally put forth, a gun lends it self to quick, relatively easy way to kill oneself, other forms you have time to think or are a lot more difficult.
I don’t want this to turn into a debate about gun control, but rather that given how suicide is increasing among young people that gun owning families should seriously be looking about how easy kids have access to guns in the house, if kids and teens are committing suicide more frequently, and guns are the most common/easiest way to kill oneself, doesn’t take a lot of logic to figure out that maybe, just maybe, gun owners with kids need to look at the risks and figure out how to cut it down. In some ways, it is kind of like when you have a toddler and put covers on the outlets, locks on the cupboards, don’t leave toxic chemicals around or booze, it is about knowing there is a risk and dealing with it.
^Isn’t it also known that women are more likely to use pills or other methods besides guns because they don’t want to make a mess that others have to clean up?
When I was a kid my parents knew this couple, the husband tried to kill himself by shooting himself in the head. He just made himself basically a vegetable that his wife then had to take care of.
I tried to point out that, of course, successful suicide attempts will occur only if the person uses a lethal method to kill himself. If guns are banned, then a motivated person will find something else.
I understand your points about impulsivity. Of course, parents and anyone else should use care and common sense with gun safety. The poster though was attributing suicide to “gun culture” which is bogus.
The point above about the aftermath of unsuccessful suicide is an interesting point. Someone mangled by a gun is obvious to look at. But there are many more people “mangled” by overdoses. Nevertheless I don’t think that an appeal to end our pill culture will do much good.