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Suicide Among Teens

Nikha

LOGOSummary• Definition :• Teenagers experience strong feelings of stress, confusion, self-doubt,

pressure to succeed, financial uncertainty, and other fears while growing up. For some teenagers, divorce, the formation of a new family with step-parents and step-siblings, or moving to a new community can be very

unsettling and can intensify self-doubts. For some teens, suicide may appear to be a solution to their problems and stress.

Suicide is the third-leading cause of death for 15- to 24-year-olds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), after accidents and homicide. It's also thought that at least 25 attempts are made for every completed teen suicide.

That is a real world problem! As president Benjamin once said, “Teens are the future of human being! ” Let’s imagine, if teens all suicide, what will the world be like? Dogs and cats take control…

LOGOHow Does this Problem Affect Us?

• Suicide in general affects people so much, as does any kind of death- yet especially so in teenagers and when it has to do with mental illness and taking ones life, it poses grave challenges for people to process the event.

I would assume that the community as a whole would feel a bond, a need to reach out to one another to help comfort each other. It is a shock to learn of someone so young and so alive dying suddenly. Mental illness is a taboo subject in our society. Often this type of illness is thought to be the fault of the sufferer- some sort of character defect - or some kind of attention getting behavior - and in children mental illness is almost an unthinkable concept. I think the image most people have of the mentally ill are those who are aged and the illness has progressed from something that's happened along the way, bad choices maybe coupled with age. The homeless are considered lazy, when most often they are sick and in need. Today's society is very naive in what mental illness is. Suicide is often the result of mental illness - it can however be an impulsive act, to note. When a child goes untreated for a mental illness: a thought disorder, behavior issue, feelings of sadness, eating disorders, cutting...the end result could mean suicide and in a percentage of cases it does mean just that. It is a stark and brutal awareness for the community and the largest issue is that since people are so unaware of what mental illness is (because people hide this disease from each other), no one has any experience to draw from regarding how to process the event. This is why crisis counselors are brought in, they help the community process what's happened and what it means to them, their overall perspective of life, mortality and most importantly, why it's happened (and hopefully how to prevent it!)

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Solutions1.Talk about suicide in an open manner. Teens need to be given a chance to discuss suicide by voicing their thoughts and opinions. Candid discussion is important particularly when a teen suicide has occurred in a community.n Let young people know about local hotline telephone numbers and crisis intervention services.2.Model healthy behavior and positive problem-solving approaches. Adults can be models for young people by dealing with their own stress in a constructive manner. 3.Use television shows, films, newspaper articles and other media as a trigger for a discussion of effective ways to deal with stress and depression. 4.Provide opportunities for group support. Teens sharing problems with other teens who help find solutions can be beneficial. 5.Get help for a teen who expresses suicidal intent or shows the warning signs - it is important. There are a number of avenues open to you to get the teenager the help he or she needs. Support and reassurance are important. Help is available from a number of different sources - school, school councilors, teachers, family doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, voluntary organizations, community mental health center, local hospital or social agency.

6.In an urgent situation contact your family doctor, or consult a mental health doctor. If a teen is in what you believe to be is imminent danger call 911, do not leave them.

• Solutions 1-5 are successful in 48 ％ -53.2 ％• Solution 6 is the imergency solution,it is 98.2 ％ in success.

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Statistics

In a survey of high school students, the National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center found that almost 1 in 5 teens had thought about suicide, about 1 in 6 teens had made plans for suicide, and more than 1 in 12 teens had attempted suicide in the last year. As many as 8 out of 10 teens who commit suicide try to ask for help in some way before committing suicide, such as by seeing a doctor shortly before the suicide attempt.

Teen girls and boys are both at risk for suicide. Teen girls are more likely to attempt suicide, but teenage boys are four to five times more likely to die by suicide. Over half of teen suicide deaths are inflicted by guns.

One in four youth will struggle with suicidal thoughts. Make that half by the age of 20. For those ages 10 - 19, suicide is the second leading cause of death and third-leading cause of death for those ages 20 - 24.

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Possible Solutions

• NEW or MODERN solutions are being tried.Scientists and phycologists are working toward helping with teen suicide in different agencies around the world.

One solution that is new is to include “self-development” as a subject at all levels of education – pre-primary, primary, secondary and tertiary. The advent of self-development in the school curriculum will ensure that this generation of youth are educated on how to say no, how to communicate better and how to find good companionship; failure is not the end of the world, but rather a learning opportunity that offers leadership skills and various other self-development traits. This is what is missing in our society.The US government is already working toward helping with this real-world problem.

Within the boundary of schools, colleges or universities, care centers as a subject or module will allow the possibility of coaching. Inclusion of people around you caring as a subject would solve part of the problem; designing a coaching or mentor programme will solve the other part. It is time to stop focusing only on school qualifications, but to base schooling on caring others around you! This is now the main project for UK government since the bullying online(famous Sharah incident)

LOGOWhat Will be the Result if This Problem ISN’T solved soon?

The effects of suicide behavior or completed suicide on friends and family members are often devastating. Individuals who lose a loved one to suicide (suicide survivors) are more at risk for becoming preoccupied with the reason for the suicide while wanting to deny or hide the cause of death, wondering if they could have prevented it, feeling blamed for the problems that preceded the suicide, feeling rejected by their loved one, and stigmatized by others. Survivors may experience a great range of conflicting emotions about the deceased, feeling everything from intense emotional pain and sadness about the loss, helpless to prevent it, longing for the person they lost, and anger at the deceased for taking their own life to relief if the suicide took place after years of physical or mental illness in their loved one. This is quite understandable given that the person they are grieving is at the same time the victim and the perpetrator of the fatal act.

• And for the society, we lost leaders and talented humanbeings in different fields. In an research from Havard University, 48 ％ of the teens who is suicide are genius.

Individuals left behind by the suicide of a loved one tend to experience complicated grief in reaction to that loss. Symptoms of grief that may be experienced by suicide survivors include intense emotion and longings for the deceased, severely intrusive thoughts about the lost loved one, extreme feelings of isolation and emptiness, avoiding doing things that bring back memories of the departed, new or worsened sleeping problems, and having no interest in activities that the sufferer used to enjoy.

LOGOReferences• http://kidshealth.org/parent/emotions/behavior/suicide.html 10

points• http://aacap.org/page.ww?name=Teen+Suicide&section=

Facts+for+Families 10 points• http://psychcentral.com/lib/2007/teenagers-and-suicide/

8 points• http://blogs.psychcentral.com/depression/ 10 points• http://www.kidshealth.org/teen/your_mind/feeling_sad/suicide.html• 9 points• http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?

qid=20061219164401AAjrL7O 8 points

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