Tag: teen suicide

In the largest newspaper in the world this week, one of the largest problems in the world was proposed as having a very simple solution. No, the answer to our suicide crisis among youth is not to encourage more teens to embrace more treatment. It’s to pursue multifaceted answers to a complex, multifaceted problem.

Teen suicide risk is influenced by relationships with adults and teachers, perceived popularity, close friendships, and school connectedness.

I feel like I have been failed by the healthcare system over and over again. I expected to be able to rely on therapists, psychologists, and doctors to properly evaluate, diagnosis, and treat me… especially when chronic suicidality is in the picture. Instead, I have a lengthy list of ways I have been failed. These failures have often added to my hopelessness.

What are we doing to our people? What life have we created for our youth? I want to believe that those struggling individuals for whom life became unbearable under the influence of medication cocktails have not died in vain. I have chosen to see their action as both a sacrifice and statement to all of us.

To be a parent of a suicidal child is to be in a terrible position, where you hold in your hands the life most valuable to you and know that any slip of your hands may end that life. In the 1970s, my suicidality was treated nonmedically and I lived. In the 2000s, my daughter Martha’s suicidality was treated medically and she died.

From TIME: According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, the suicide rate among teen girls reached a 40-year high in 2015. From 2007...

The controversy with 13RW is essentially a clashing of worlds — the world of entertainment (and its predominant audience of teens) and the world of science and practice. Who’s to say those from each perspective cannot find common ground in the service of something with life and death consequences?