Is Your Teenager Crying Out For Help?

In 2007 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 14.5% of high school students reported that they had seriously considered attempting suicide and that 6.9% had attempted suicide during the 12 months preceding the survey.

Adolescents may feel that the pain in their lives is too great and that there is no way out. People, who are contemplating suicide, including adolescents, usually communicate their intent in some way. This communication may not always be verbal but often the adolescents do want to talk to someone. This communication may sound troubled, consist of prolonged silence, or it may be displayed in the themes of their drawings or writings.

Often suicidal adolescents feel that no one understands them, and they think no one cares. This leaves them with the belief that there is no hope for their situations.

Here are some common risk factors and warning signs often observed in teens prior to a suicide attempt.

• Alcohol or other drugs abuse.

• Withdrawal from friends and family.

• Sudden extreme changes in eating habits, weight gain or loss, disturbed sleep patterns, and problems concentrating.

• Expressions of feeling helpless, hopeless, worthless, sad and lonely.

• Obsessive thoughts and preoccupation with themes of death or actual expressions of suicidal thoughts.

• Giving away prized possessions or pets to close friends or family.

• Lowered grades, truancy, discontinuing activities or hobbies that they formerly enjoyed.

• Lack of concern about appearance, health, and cleanliness.

• Notes, poems, stories or pictures created by the child with themes of death and depression.

• Prolonged hostility, extreme mood swings from depressed to happy with no apparent cause, and extreme personality changes.

• Recent suicide of a friend or relative.

• Self-destructive and dangerous acts or previous suicide attempts.

Unfortunately, many of these risk factors go unnoticed and taken individually they do not necessarily indicate that certain teens are suicidal. However, careful attention to these signs and professional consultation with the family physician or mental health professional should not be neglected.

Parents often sense fear or extreme sadness in a suicidal child. Other parents state that prior to a suicide attempt, their teen signaled cues of a desire for help.

The children’s friends, other members of the family, school personnel, or youth activity directors may be in the position to detect a pre-suicide posture.
Recognition and immediate intervention are required in this potentially tragic time in adolescents’ lives.