Teen Suicide

Today’s youth seems to have the most experience with changing and dealing with different emotions than any other age group. When adolescents come across new emotions that may be different than those they may be familiar with they find themselves unable to react to these new emotions since they are new and something they have never experienced before. These new feelings such as heartbreak, conforming, disapproval, isolation and the lack of coping skills for them can result in thoughts of suicidal attempts and oftentimes suicidal completions. If we as a society can become educated on the dangers and warning signs of suicidal teens then it would become easier to decrease the negative statistics that are making teen suicide the #3 leading cause in teenage death in the country. New emotions and change contribute to the average teenage life, and inadequate means of coping can leads to destruction of one’s self.

The list of causes for teen suicide can go on and on, but the list of things that people actually know about teen suicide isn’t quite as long. It seems as though people are aware of what teen suicide is and the most common causes of it such as stress and depression, but there is really more to it than just those two factors. Society can create stress by putting perfect images everywhere especially in the media. The media is the major outlet for which people obtain their information so when teenagers turn on the television or read a magazine they are constantly bombarded with what they should look like and how they should be. Society’s standards can turn out to be a little much especially when the average teenager may not look like a cover model or portray the perfect body image. These things come into context when teenagers begin to evaluate themselves based off of these standards and see that they may not fit these images and begin to feel down and depressed.

Depression and other forms of mental illness can be a cause of teenage suicide and violent images in the media may plant the idea. Entertainment is one of the major media outlets that seem to be affecting our youth the most. This phenomenon includes media violence and is cross cultural which means it doesn’t only happen in the United States. In a Russian city by the name of Kstovo six teenagers were reported to have committed suicide by hanging themselves and jumping from tall buildings. Investigators later determined that all six victims were devoted fans of the video game Final Fantasy which includes the depiction of an attempted suicide by one of the characters. Locally in the U.S. a sixteen year old boy from Shopiere, Michigan shot himself in the head while acting out a scene that was a very close resemblance of a depiction of Russian roulette from the 1978 film The Deer Hunter and police ruled his death was accidental. During the past 40 years there have been more than 1,000 studies on the effects of media violence and most of them have been able to draw to the same conclusion which is that violence in the entertainment media leads to real world violence and suicidal acts. These studies did not just focus on television as an outlet, it also focused on the movies and many other forms of entertainment that serve as a negative influence on our youth (Marcovitz, 2004).

There are many different kinds of misconceptions that society carries of the reasoning behind teen suicide and according to an article in the Toronto Star that was published on Friday June 2nd, 2006 teen suicide can be narrowed all the way down to a specific category within the gay community. Lesbian teens were found to be more suicidal than straight teens according to some new research. This data also shows that lesbian/bisexual females find themselves at a higher risk of suicide than any homosexual/bisexual male. The role that society plays in telling us how we should be and determining what women should be like is a huge contribution to these abnormally high statistics on teen lesbian suicide. “Kids are picking up these messages” (Lesbian Teens Face Higher Risk of Suicide), says research director of B.C.’s McCreary Centre Society Elizabeth Saeweyc referring to the role that the media plays on giving out negative messages against the gay community and especially aiming it more toward females than males. People may not be aware of the media being a high source of teen depression and not knowing that kids are in fact picking up these messages makes it impossible for someone to be able to do something about it.

There are plenty of reasons as to why teens may choose to commit suicide. The vast majority of people would say that suicide is caused by stress or depression but in reality so many factors can contribute to a suicidal teen. Depression and stress are however two of the main factors. Depression is caused by an association with changes in the chemistry of the brain. Depression is viewed as the common cause of suicide but can be treated through medication to help the imbalance of chemicals and/or meeting with a therapist. Stress can also ruin a person if it is not handled correctly. A certain amount of stress is inevitable in life but everyone has to cope with stress sometime. Stress is unavoidable but the ways in which someone may cope with stress can be the difference between becoming frustrated and unhappy or becoming satisfied and being able to enjoy life. Destructive ways of coping with stress can lead someone to be depressed and suicidal whereas constructive ways can put you on the path to life. Stress and depression can at times go hand in hand as cause and effect with stress being the cause of the effects that depression brings. Some helpful ways of dealing with stress can be to speak up, letting people know how you feel can oftentimes help you get the problem solved. Being able to negotiate can be a good way to help you get what you want and a great way to resolve a disagreement. Getting off the merry-go-round is a term that is used when you keep trying the same thing over and over and it just doesn’t seem to work, this should be a sign that tells you to try a different tactic and that can help reduce the amount of stress (Murphy, 1999).

Some other main influences for suicide include social isolation, family disturbances or breakdowns, low self-esteem and drug/alcohol abuse. Socially isolated teens may become angry at the social environment that they find themselves in, whether it be getting left out or being to shy to join in, and they turn that anger inward by thinking about suicide. Family disturbances can be a major influence as well and one very good example would be divorce and the child having to deal with the loss of one of the parents (Sperekas, 2000). Suicide is an impulsive act and when drugs/alcohol are involved they could make a teenager act impulsively. These things interfere