With the recent spate of celebrity-related suicides — Alexander McQueen (a fashion designer), Andrew Koenig (from the TV series, Growing Pains), and now Michael Blosil, Marie Osmond’s 18-year-old son — it seems like a sad but appropriate time to weigh in on this tragic outcome of untreated (or under-treated) depression, which is the leading cause of suicide.
Alicia Sparks, blogging over at Celebrity Psychings, notes recommendations for the media when reporting on suicide, because suicide contagion is a real phenomenon. That is, there is a small but statistically significant increase in suicide deaths after a reported suicide makes the media rounds. Especially when the person who died by suicide is a celebrity.
While suicide feels like a very personal and intense situation that no other human being can understand, it is actually something that a great many of us have struggled with and indeed do understand. Suicide most often accompanies an untreated or under-treated mental health concern, most often depression. And it’s often accompanied by immediate alcohol or drug use, which makes the decision seem more rationale, but sadly, also more impulsive.
The cause of an individual suicide is invariably more complicated than a recent painful event such as the break-up of a relationship or the loss of a job. An individual suicide cannot be adequately explained as the understandable response to an individual’s stressful occupation, or an individual’s membership in a group encountering discrimination. Social conditions alone do not explain a suicide. People who appear to become suicidal in response to such events, or in response to a physical illness, generally have significant underlying mental problems, though they may be well-hidden.
Suicide remains the third-leading cause of death among older teenagers in the U.S. Young men are four times more at risk than young women.
Depression is the leading cause of suicide. Usually when people have made the decision to die by suicide, they are either struggling with depression that isn’t being treated, or with treatment that isn’t help them.
I think this is especially true of young adults, who, for many of them, are often feeling some of these kinds of intense emotions for the first time in their lives. Older teens and young adults will be experiencing their first relationship breakup, one that few of them are emotionally experienced or prepared to handle.
Perhaps one of the future solutions for combating suicide by older teens and young adults is through a class targeted at helping them better understand relationships and their emotional reactions. Or heck, even just a class about emotions. We teach kids so many useful skills in school, but we do little to prepare them emotionally, or with realistic, usable relationship skills.
There really should be an Emotions 101 or Relationships 101 course taught in sophomore year of high school that covers these topics. While I’m not a big fan of institutional teaching of these kinds of things, it’s clear that many (most?) parents never talk to their teens (and likely cannot talk to their teens because the teens don’t want to talk about it) about these kinds of topics.
And while I think that you see older teens and young adults eventually taking such a class in college, I’m afraid that for some of them, it’s far too late to do much good (and doesn’t help at all the folks who never go to college).
Depression to a teen or young adult may seem like a weird label to put on the feelings they’re experiencing. They may not recognize it as depression: “Hey, I just broke up with this girl — my first real, serious relationship — but I’ll be okay.” Indeed, I’m certain many teens bounce back from their first, serious relationship without any long-term emotional scratches or scars. But for some teens, it’s far more traumatic. They may never recover. And our current outreach just isn’t reaching them.
Teens, just like adults, often turn to alcohol or drugs to help cope with their emotions. Teens often don’t have a lot of reliable, well-nurtured coping skills to begin with, so alcohol or drugs are an easy answer to feeling upset. Combine a teen’s emotional turmoil with getting into drugs and/or alcohol, and you have a seriously potent combination. Again, in most teens, nothing really bad ever comes from their experimentation and use of these things. But in some, it turns their world inside out and upside down. They see no tomorrow, no future, no hope.
I don’t know much about the personal psychological histories of Alexander McQueen, Andrew Koenig or Michael Blosil. But from what I’ve read, it seems likely that they were battling demons related to either depression, alcohol or drugs, or combination of these, and just weren’t getting (and perhaps not even seeking) the help they needed. While such celebrity cases sadden me, they are a drop in the bucket compared to the over 4,000 teens and young adults who take their lives every year here in the U.S. (or the additional 26,000+ adults who do so).
Every single day, another 11 young adults will choose death by suicide.
What You Can Do To Help
It’s important to recognize the warning signs of a teen or young adult who may be thinking about suicide:
- Talking about suicide or death or “going away”
- Talking about feeling hopeless or guilty
- Pulling away from friends or family
- Losing the desire to take part in normal activities
- Having trouble concentrating or thinking clearly
- Exhibiting lots of self-destructive behavior (drinking alcohol, driving too fast)
- Giving away prized possessions or their stuff
- Big changes in their eating or sleeping habits
Experts recommend that, if you’re an adult in a teen’s or young adult’s life, to stay involved:
- Watch and listen for warning signs
- Keep lines of communication open and express your concern, support and love
- If your teen doesn’t want to talk, suggest a more neutral person such as a relative, clergy member, counselor or doctor
- Ask questions, even tough ones, such as if he or she has had thoughts of suicide
- Get psychological help if your child is thinking about suicide
- If your teen is in a crisis situation, your emergency room can conduct an evaluation and refer you to resources
- Make sure you keep an appointment with a mental health professional — even if your teen says he or she is feeling better
If you feel like you may be suicidal, there is also a resource called the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline which you can call, anytime day or night at their toll-free number, 1-800-273-TALK (273-8255). Or if you prefer online, read this first.
These kinds of resources can help. But the real long-term help is in changing the conversation by finding a way to help get teens and young adults the resources they need to better cope with the changes in life — especially surrounding their emotions. It’s possible that if we taught such emotional skills early on in their lives, they would be better equipped to handle the ups and downs of teenage and later life.
19 comments
Thanks for this article. I will also post it to my Facebook page. I hope everyone who reads your article will talk to their families and friends about depression, especially know the signs, what to look for, and how to provide help. Depression is so often the underlying cause of destructive behavior(s)
be it suicide, drugs, self injury…..
Depression is not a cause…it is an effect…very rarely despite what so-called health professionals attest to is depression the problem itself. Depression is something that happens when people are not be heard or listened to or are not listening to their own needs or are neglected in some way. Depression helps us to know what we need it is a warning bell telling us something IS wrong that we are missing something.
I am not pro-suicide (even though I’m actively planning my own). But I frequently feel as though the world would have been just fine if I’d offed myself at the age of 15, when I first became suicidal, instead of hanging in there through years of pain.
I’ve been thinking about this also so I wrote a post that is scheduled for tomorrow.
Isn’t the brain of an adolescent/young adult a factor in that the first pathways to form are the emotional ones, so everything feel so much more intense than adults. The cognitive pathways form last, so it would seem that they would have intense feelings without impulse control or the cognitive skills to deal with their emotions.
John,
This is an important article.
While reading your suggestion about implementing an emotional education class in high school, the social worker in me came to the fore. What can we do, I began asking myself, to make your suggestions into a concrete reality.
In my mind, this article should serve as the most basic stepping stone towards greater action. My question is what steps can we, the PsychCentral readership, begin taking towards bringing emotional and relationship education classes into our high school classrooms?
Perhaps a first step is designing an emotional/relationship education curriculum. I would be more than happy to try my hand at it.
What are your thoughts?
Thanks.
Ben Klempner, MSW
[email protected]
As a previously suicidal teen (now age 59), I could write for hours. My parents refused to get me help when referred by my high school. I’ve done 4 years of research on youth suicide and am convinced of several short things that I will share with all of you, especially if you’re in the field.
If you read prevention stuff by the CDC, the ivy league bastions of research, the American Academy of Pediatrics – none of them were ever a suicidal young person and they clearly aren’t in touch with today’s youth. The signs, symptoms and prevention hasn’t changed but our kids are living in a very different world.
The one ray of hope that I have discovered is a new paradigm – The Second Wind Fund in Denver – and I will work in my area to become an affiliate of them. In summary, they provide funds to mental health professionals to immediately see and continue counseling to uninsured and under insured youth in danger of dying by suicide. This program seems to be making a difference.
To Jude – I was in your head 46 years ago and I hope you can connect with some people in your life, who will help you. In my case it was my high school counselor who saw me every day, if necessary and connected me with caring adults who accepted me, unconditionally. I don’t know how old you are, but I do know how much courage it takes to get up every day when you’re really depressed. If you can muster up the energy, also try anything that will keep you from focusing on yourself. My son just walks outside when he needs to and it helps. He also writes/journals to get some of the heaviness out of his heart.
You aren’t going crazy for your thoughts, however your situation might be crazy – that’s a very important distinction that helped me sort it out a little. I often think that’s an important element of bullying today too.
I can’t begin to tell you how glad I am that I didn’t die in my teens and twenties, but you wouldn’t have convinced me of that at the time. One can only live for the moment when depressed and looking into the future is too scary and lonely.
I have had an aunt, cousin and three friends who died by suicide. I have now seen that when you end your pain, you cause an immense lifetime of confusion, guilt and pain in someone or many people, that you leave behind. Someone will miss you enormously and I know that’s hard to believe right now. Many of us out here do care about you – please don’t kill yourself.
I know it’s impossible to believe right now, but there is a future for you. One that has much less pain. You will eventually meet people that you can connect with. Remember that many drugs and all alcohol are depressants that will make you much worse. If you make that mistake – it’s harder to come back.
Hang in there. Ben and I care (and I don’t know Ben from a hole in the wall!)
Good Luck, Sue
great article, John.
In addition to your excellent suggestions, I’ll add a couple based on the research for the book I’m writing, SUICIDE UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL.
First, parents should create an atmosphere in which personal problems are admitted and discussed. Too many families insist their kids put a happy face on, regardless of what is actually happening or what the kids genuinely feel. Repeatedly I hear that people were criticized or made fun of by parents and older siblings whenever they admitted that their lives weren’t close to perfect.
Second, we should stop treating suicide as taboo-tainted. How can we expect young people to get the help they need more often than they do now, if we act as if being depressed or feeling hopeless is a terrible character flaw instead of a result of genes and body chemistry interacting with life circumstances? We should be as open to diagnosing and treating depression as, for example, appendicitis.
To your excellent suggestions, I’ll add two based on research for the book I’m writing, SUICIDE UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL.
First, we should remove the taint of taboo from the topic of suicide and accept diagnosis and treatment of depression as realistically and openly as of appendicitis.
Second, families should create an atmosphere in which negative events and emotions are openly discussed and addressed. Too many parents and older siblings make fun of, and even insult, kids and teenagers who admit to being unhappy and hopeless. If you don’t want to know your child or sibling is desperate, you’re not likely to help prevent a suicide.
We have had two suicides in our family – husband and father – and I can only say that it solves nothing. Yes,it takes away the pain of the person who leaves but look what you are cheating yourself out of. And look t the incredible pain and suffering that you leave behind. Jude…there is a better way. Don’t be afraid of the pain. Face it and walk through it. There is happiness on the other side – and I don’t mean via death. I mean by living life.
Excellent post, John, and also the thoughtful and open comments. It’s important that parents learn the signs of teen depression. Unfortunately, it’s not always enough to prevent serious mental illness and suicide. We need to identify at-risk teens early on, before they reach a crisis, move into alcohol or drug abuse, or begin failing in school. Parents are typically unable to recognize early warning signs, which can be subtle and unpredictable. According to the NIH, the vast majority of teens with mental illness are never identified. At TeenScreen National Center for Mental Health Checkups at Columbia University, we believe in early identification — alerting parents and physicians to a possible problem so that they can address it before it develops into major illness. A simple checklist given to teens as part of a routine checkup at the doctor’s office, can sound an early warning signal, and help prevent the tragedy of teen suicide.
This is an excellent article. In a way, the most direct route (right now) to solutions is “changing the conversation” about emotional awareness and expression.
But how we talk about emotions (and deal with them) has been affected by core cultural issues that I believe are pushing young people into suicidal depression.
Below are some things I think we all need to look at as a society, and that mental health professionals should start addressing with more courage and creativity.
The natural urge to compete and prove oneself as a young adult has been morphed into something freakish by the media: competition in attractiveness, material acquisition, sport and academic abilities, family status, etc. One glance at most prominent role models is enough to make a parent want to scream.
Whether a teenager or young adult is strongly competitive by nature or less so, when facing the coming of age process, they find that there really is no process. Social and cultural standards, reinforced by media and government, have made maturation all about getting stuff, be it friends, test scores, fame, things, etc. What young people are really needing to do is form connections to a community that has resources of a more sustainable nature. When adolescents have that, they can begin to form some personalized and authentic ideas of who they are in relation to their world.
It is natural and normal to want one’s maturation, and the social recognition thereof, to be a step-wise process. “I do this, then I can be part of that group, and have certain privileges and status.” Indigenous cultures recognize this need and many have fairly sensible ways of providing adolescents with those steps, through rites of passage, quests, apprenticeships, and the mentoring from elders. The young people establish unique individualized experiences and tasks with the help of those who’ve gone before. They then discover contributions they can make to their culture by having adventures and completing certain tasks. This helps them form their own identity while forging lifelong bonds and personal/social values.
Where is this process in our own culture? If the only available emotional guidance is a psychologist or school counselor, the only task is how to survive the stress of industrialized education and/or get the funds to buy enough things, the only adventure is acting out on the internet or the streets and becoming a target for all the wrong people, and the only contribution to community may come through joining a gang or getting into self-harm behaviors like your peers, there are some pretty dark places any kid’s mind and heart can go.
Also, hypocrisy is toxic to adolescents and we are now living with the results of mass hypocrisy, through media and corporatized government. It is as if we’ve become culturally schizophrenic. Our hearts are in one place, but the “voices” (media/corporate/government) in our heads are telling us something different.
So I think the developmental process for adolescents is pretty much broken. Though on a case by case and on a community basis, it can be partially restored.
The other thing, which is a lot simpler, and REALLY should be part of the mental health professionals approach, is that the level of toxins that kids accumulate by the time they’re in their late teens, through food, environment, etc, can be huge. This can have a profound effect on emotions, thoughts, immunity, and overall well being. Addressing this early on, ideally before adolescence, would help immensely in improving emotional and mental health. If you often feel tired, can’t really think straight, have trouble with stress, struggle to control impulses, and are sick too often as a teenager, you’re not likely to be up for improving your emotional awareness and communication skills.
We absolutely must start addressing these problems holistically. Starting with fundamental self-care, including your “Emotions 101” and/or Relational Skills (across the spectrum) is a good idea. I too, don’t like the idea of institutionalizing this kind of learning. It tends to get turned into something rather different as it becomes standardized, but at least we’d be acknowledging the importance of this area for teenagers. Gifted mentors and programs would begin to appear and more kids would benefit.
Maureen said to Jude: “Don’t be afraid of the pain.” I agree, and would add, for anyone who feels unable to walk through it, ask someone to help you by just being there for you and listening until you feel ready to walk through it. Understanding, whether it’s your own or someone else’s is the first step to self awareness, and with self awareness you can begin to walk through the pain. Although there are some journeys we do alone, having someone else along to help scout for dangers and to share your burdens when they get too heavy will allow you to complete your journey alive and intact.
I have to say I loved “Sue’s” post! It’s
so refreshing to know that there’s a lot
of caring, nice people in the world. They’re not all jerks and idiots! She also reached out to somebody she didn’t even know and tried to save him and lift
him up both emotionally and spiritually.
I was also suicidal in my ’20s and ’30s.
I was diagnosed finally (after 6 years of thinking I had major depression) with
BiPolar Disorder II. II indicates a less
instense form of the disease. I’m never manic, but instead, something called Hypo-manic which still is no picnic, but
it’s also better than the depressive part of the disorder (imo). It seems that I was able to get myself out of suicidal phases and moments. The problem
is my 19 year old teenager has been feeling so depressed as well, lately. It
worries me b/c he isolates himself, but this is nothing new, back to when he was
four years old and was dx’d with a high functioning form of Autism, called
Asperger’s Syndrome. So having that diagnosis makes it hard to discern which is which. I read through the different signs of suicidal ideation or when somebody has actually concocted a plan for suicide. He didn’t connect with
the list, except of course for the isolation but again, that’s nothing new
and it’s also something I’m worried
about. Believe me, I’m not passe about it! Like Sue, I could go on and on about
this subject, but that is just not going
to happen! lol
There is circumstantial evidence that suicides happen during episodes of extreme despondency that happen like panic attacks. College administrators have commented that programs like the one championed here do not effect those “out of the blue” suicides.
There is a simple problem that can be shown to have episodes of panic, fear, depression, and thoughts of suicide. It is preventable using simple precautions.
It would cost nothing to include a warning about Subliminal Distraction exposure in school safety programs. SD, a normal feature of the physiology of sight, arises out of the manner in which your brain detects movement to make you startle. The cubicle was designed to deal with believed-to be-harmless episodes in office workers forty years ago. I have yet to find anyone in medicine or psychiatry aware this problem exists.
I had no clue the teen suicide rate was so high at 11 teens a day. This is absolutely horrifying and it’s something I needed to open my eyes. I’m curious if the media coverage amped up to the level it is today, over and over again, has made this phenomenon worse. By continuing to accept the increasing coverage of these situations just to get viewers in magazines and on news shows we are accelerating suicide rates!?
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