The Roots of Teen Suicide
Tuesday, April 3, 2018The Topic: The Roots of Teen SuicideThe News Story: Teen Suicide Is SoaringThe New Research: Family Disintegration Pushes Adolescents toward Suicide in Lithuania The News Story: Teen Suicide Is Soaring The suicide rate among white children and teens rose a staggering 70% between 2010 and 2016, reports USA Today, and although black children and teens kill themselves far less often, the rate of such tragedy is up for them, too. In the subtitle of the story, USA Today asks if “spotty mental health and addiction treatment share blame.” Too often, the story says, mental health services are difficult to access, and parents don’t catch symptoms early enough. There’s also “the host of well-documented and hard to solve societal issues, including opioid-addicted parents, a polarized political environment and poverty that persists in many areas.” Says Carmen Garner, an elementary art teacher and also an author, “Our students are dying because they are not equipped to handle situations created by adults—situations that leave a child feeling abandoned and with a broken heart.” What are these adult situations? The story names a few—drug-addled parents, poverty, and also the darkness of social media. But the story is oddly silent on the heartbreak of divorce and family instability, perhaps the greatest heartbreak of all for far too many children today. Research out of Lithuania may shed some light here, revealing that these “adult situations” have put many, many children at risk for suicide. (Jayne O'Donnell and Anne Saker, “Teen suicide is soaring. Do spotty mental health and addiction treatment share blame?” USA Today, March 19, 2018.) The New Research: Family Disintegration Pushes Adolescents toward Suicide in Lithuania Suicide rates have skyrocketed in Lithuania in recent decades, with a particularly troubling surge in such rates among Lithuanian adolescents. Why this tragic epidemi
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