What Parents Should Know About Teen Suicide

For a teenager to be so unbearably unhappy that he would choose to kill himself is something that's almost too painful for a parent to think about. But with the increasing prevalence of teen suicide, no parent can afford to ignore the possibility. Suicide is now the third leading cause of death for high-school students.
Kids look at this world as being more and more hopeless. They have no answer for their pain and despair, so many are choosing suicide as their solution. When I was in high school-- a school with 3,000 students-- I never knew of any of my peers committing suicide. And even in my work years ago as a director of Young Life, suicide among teh teens in our region was a very unusual event that I rarely heard of.

Fact is, before the 1960's, suicide by adolescents happened only rarely; but today, nearly one in ten teens contemplates suicide, and over 500,000 attempt it each year. While suicide rates for all other ages have dropped, suicides among teens have nearly tripled.

Between the sexes, teen boys are more than four times as likely t ocommit suicide as girls. But girls are known to think about and attempt suicide about twice as often as boys. The difference is the method; girls attempt suidie by overdosing on drugs or cutting themselves, and thankfully most are found in time and rescued. Boys tend to use more lethal methods, such as firearms, hanging, or jumping from heights.

The Warning Signs

By: Mark Gregston, Heartlight Ministries