Suicide is the third leading cause of death among teenagers and young adults. Nearly all teens committing suicide are suffering from extreme emotional pain and distress and feel unable to cope with problems. Some suffer from mental illnesses and feel helpless about the future. Others that suffer from many different symptoms such as depression, stress build up, self doubt, sexual issues, peer pressures. Feeling helpless and/or hopeless, are committing suicide by the thousands each year, thus making themselves a fatal statistic but unfortunately, intervention often does not come soon enough to prevent teenagers from making an irreversible decision on what may have been a temporary problem. ...view middle of the document...
.." (Frymier 1)? Researchers found that there has been a dramatic expansion in the number of severely and profoundly depressed high school students. For example, between six and eight percent of junior and senior high school students have attempted suicide.A countless number of researchers have been working on developing a profile of teenagers who are likely to become suicidal. Unfortunately, they haven't altogether succeeded in identifying such individuals. However, some researchers have found that family breakdowns, a youths unemployment, and the decreasing religious observance among young people are the three strongest social correlates of suicidal behaviors. Yet, they have been flourishing in identifying some characteristics of those least likely to commit suicide. Dr. Garfinkel indicates that:For instance, we know that girls kill themselves much less often than boys, at a rate somewhere between one-third to one-quarter that of boys. We also know that race is a factor. The rate of suicide for black youth is about one-fifth that for whites, while Native American kill themselves ten times more often than whites... (Frymier 1)Throughout childhood, teenagers experience strong feelings of stress, confusion, self-doubt, pressure to succeed, and financial uncertainty. They may also experience their parents getting a divorce, developing a new family with stepparents or step siblings or moving to a new town. This sudden move adds to the already existing stress of pressure of a teenager's usual day.Suicidal teens often hide true feelings in fear of being made fun of. In many suicide cases, teenagers have secrets that are kept from everyone else. He/she has fears of parents finding out about them being sexually active, or a pregnancy in their relationship. Some also may fear that being a homosexual is wrong and nobody is going to want to be around them. Teenagers must sort through and figure out what kind of feeling a standards there are towards friends, parents, religion, and the standards of the community they live in. The teen needs to figure out on their own, to which way they are going to deal with physical relationships and sexual feelings.The high suicide rates are mostly because of teen depression. Between five and ten percent of teens that commit or try to commit suicide suffer from depression. One out of four will seriously think about committing suicide (Beman 1). Behind the mask of sadness there tends to be many different reasons that trigger depression, causing teens to want to commit suicide. For instance, negative thoughts and actions, external pressures, personal pressures, obesity, and physical differences and/or stress buildup.There are many symptoms of suicide that are comparable to depression. Teens may have a change in their eating and sleeping habits, withdraw from friends, family and regular activities. They may also have violent actions towards others, have a rebellious behavior, or run away. Some teens use drugs and alcohol...
