Suicide and Adolescent Girls

[niyad]

Suicide and Adolescent Girls

For the first time, suicide has replaced car accidents as the leading cause of death for young adolescents. Think about that: middle school-aged children are already feeling such pressure and stress that they feel suicide is the only answer. Why isn’t this on the front page of every major newspaper?





Using new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the New York Times reports that while more boys kill themselves than girls in the U.S., the recent increase in the suicide rate was significantly higher for girls than for boys—an alarming nine times higher. And while the total number of children dying from self-harm in the U.S. is relatively low—425 deaths in this age group in 2014—the rapid increase is tremendously concerning.

The current available research on suicide among adolescents is not prolific, but there is growing concern that cultural norms and perspectives, as well as the rise of social networking and the earlier-than-ever onset of puberty, are contributing to depression, self-harm and suicide, particularly among young adolescent girls. This concern is not limited to the United States. Around the world, adolescents face social norms—socially and culturally-driven expectations—about who and what girls and boys “should” and “shouldn’t” be. When girls and boys don’t feel they conform to these expectations, their mental health may suffer. And the more these adolescents engage with the rest of the world, through either traditional or social media, for example, the more likely they will be to believe that they just don’t fit “the norm.”

Just as we are grappling with the recently-released data indicating that the suicide rate among 10 to 14 year-olds in the U.S. has caught up with traffic deaths in this age group, so too are those of us who work in global health struggling with the relatively new fact that suicide has overtaken maternal mortality as the leading cause of death for girls aged 15 to 19 worldwide. Yes, suicide is now the leading cause of death among older adolescent girls worldwide. What is happening here?

Adolescents, no matter where they live, face a host of challenges as they navigate the rocky waters between childhood and adulthood. During adolescence, both boys and girls experience rapid physical growth and changes, accompanied by shifts in cognitive and emotional development. At the same time, environmental factors, including influences from family, peer groups, schools, communities and societal expectations more broadly, can work to either support or hinder young people’s wellbeing. It is also during adolescence that gender roles—and gender stereotypes–begin to firmly take hold. Gender inequalities that exist in nearly every country in the world can increase girls’ vulnerability to depression – and potentially, to self-harm and suicide. For girls, these inequalities can include inequitable access to resources and education, limited power to make decisions about their own lives and low social status as compared to boys.

. . . . .

http://msmagazine.com/blog/2016/12/19/suicide-adolescent-girls/

[Wounded Bear]

1. I have a niece that drifts in and out of dark moods...

I can tell by her FB posts when she's feeling "out of it." Not sure if she has attempted it yet, but I believe she's done some cutting and other forms of acting out. It doesn't help that she's not the "barbie" type physically. With the recent surge in bullying and other reprehensible behaviors going on out there, I fear for her.

Of course, she's a bit of an anime fan and spends too much time on line. Lot of dark stuff out there.

[niyad]

2. are her parents aware of how close she is?

[Wounded Bear]

3. I think so...

but they have a lot of balls in the air, too, so to speak.

[niyad]

4. I cannot even begin to imagine what it is like for young people these days. may your niece be safe.

[forjusticethunders]

5. So I run a gaming guild that also doubles as a support group

We, among other things, try to provide emotional support and help to each other to alleviate these pressures.

There are a lot of older teenage/young adult girls in that group, a bit older than the study but still relevant. One of them just attempted suicide this weekend.

There are several (non-exhaustive) factors at work from my perspective:

1: Intensifying academic courseloads. In 2012, students spent 6 hours a week on after school work, and this trend is only accelerating. This isn't including test study, extracurricular (which are becoming more and more required for access to top universities), and college/SAT prep. High-stakes academics is a massive source of stress. And it only gets worse in college. Young people in general hardly have time to be social, and I feel like there's a "gap" in regards to how pressured guys are to keep up versus girls.

2: The Internet is to bullying what high octane jet fuel is to fire. While I'm not *blaming* a communication tool for bullying, it's provided a means to take the already deplorable bullying crisis in schools (a crisis that we either ignore or explain away as just part of growing up).

3: The current cohort of teenagers are largely being raised by close-minded, self-centered, ignorant Boomers who extrapolate their experience of playing life on easy mode to the current challenges teens face today.

4: For straight/bi girls (again facilitated by the Internet), they're being introduced to the intricacies and complexities of dating with almost zero parental mediation (or, relating to 3, LESS than zero), at a time when young boys and men are being influenced by trashy pop culture, misogynistic subcultures on 4chan and Reddit, and other influences that see girls and women as even more blatantly "prizes' and not "people". Can't speak to how this affects girls who don't date or who aren't interested in males.

[niyad]

6. thank you for your response. the pressures young people face today are extraordinary.

[malthaussen]

7. I find point 3 a bit unconvincing.

If "the current cohort of teenagers" is "being raised by... Boomers," then those Boomers waited until about 50 or 60 to give birth.

-- Mal

[niyad]

8. I did the math, too, and you are correct.

[forjusticethunders]

9. Thinking mostly about the back end of the generation.

Basically people born between 1950-1970, though some of that does encompass GenX, though in some areas GenXers are closer to Boomers in mentality than Millennials or younger GenXers. But yeah, I was a bit off after checking the accepted definition of the cohort.

If you were born in the early to mid 1960s and you had your first child at 30, that child would be a older teen to young adult today.

[malthaussen]

10. On the other hand...

... a good friend of mine was born in 1965, and was a grandmother at 35.

I confess to a fairly rigid definition of "Boomer," with a terminus ad quem in 1960. So it would require that one be at least 40 before giving birth. But most Boomers were born before that, so it would be fallacious to assert that "most" adolescents have Boomer parents. Grandparents, yeah.

But I'd say the kind of post-war expectations that Thomas Hine discussed in "Populuxe" were in place into the 70's, then crashed when inflation and oil shortages hit, only to be resurrected the first time the "Moral Majority" "took back America" in Reagan's reign. So it is really not until circa 1990 that expectations started to radically diverge from the period of the Boom or Gen X, a process that is accelerating today. But it is an ideal that dies hard, since politicians yammering about the American Dream and Taking Back America are still trying to resurrect a similar zeitgeist.

I'd expand point 2), myself. Because bullying is coming from all directions, now, one's peers as well as older generations. And we have become more restrictive in defining what is acceptable and what is not, particularly in areas where evangelical Protestantism flourishes. More ways to come up short, in other words, and less inhibition about mocking people for it.

-- Mal