The Teenage Suicide Epidemic

When I went to high school, back in the dark ages of the 1970s, I remember two kids dying. One of them I knew well, she sat in front of me in typing class and was hit by a car. The other was sitting in the back of a truck holding gym equipment and he fell out, hitting his head and dying in the hospital a few days later. We mourned these children and it sobered us, as teenagers, because it reminded us of our own mortality.

Now my daughter is in the same high school. She has been in the school for three years and in those three years, several children have died. Two had medical problems; but two of them died because they killed themselves. One, a boy, one, a girl. My daughter knew the girl slightly.

I remember when I was in high school, a neighbor died in his garage. He was allegedly working on his car, left the motor running and died of carbon monoxide poisoning. It was suicide, but it was covered up. Suicide wasn't something that was talked about in 1979.

Today a friend told me that a girl, about my daughter's age, hung herself a few days ago. She was 16. Last week, another friend had a family member, also a teenager, try to kill herself with an overdose of pills (she survived). A few years ago, an eight year old child hung himself because he was distraught over his parents' divorce; I knew the mom slightly.

I know several kids who are on "anti-depressant" medication. As a matter of fact, it seems that half the world is on some sort of medication for some sort of mental issue. You would think that by talking about these issues instead of keeping them in the closet, would be a good thing. Teens would have something to relate to when they saw countless commercials for anti-depression medications on television. They wouldn't feel alone.

Unfortunately, this isn't the case. In the past 20 years, suicide rates in teenagers has risen at an alarming rate. According to the American Psychology Association, the suicide rate in young people (age 10-15) has risen 100 percent in the past 20 years. Since 1952, the rate of suicide among teenagers has tripled. And it's going up. We are talking suicide here, actual suicide. Not attempted suicide. Not chronic depression.