War and Peace

Adolescent Suicide

Imagine being secluded in your own desolate refuge. Assume one has a feeling of hopelessness and eternal gloom. This feeling of seclusion and obscurity often characterizes the precursors of an adolescent suicide. These feelings of gloom may be spawned be many different factors. In most cases, adolescents who reserve these feelings look for a temperate way to deploy their emotions, no matter what the consequences may be. Some teens are not devastated by pain. Some people can come to school and in the freezing weather without a jacket because the cold does not bother them. Everyone is sensitive to heat and cold to some degree. Everyone is sensitive to pain, to criticism, to degradation, but some are more sensitive than others. Everyone copes with pain differently. It is sad to say though, that sometimes this pain is too much for some people to bear and it causes them to end their life early. There are many warning signs that friends and family should be aware of and what a person should do to help a friend who may be contemplating suicide. Also, the external and internal pressures and influences should be considered when trying to explain this phenomenon.

“Every 90 minutes, a teenager somewhere in America kills himself.” (Crook 1997). This figure is very astonishing and overwhelming when you take time to think about it. Since the beginning of time, people have been committing suicide. Self inflicted death, or suicide, can be defined as “choosing the mode, time, situation, or occasion for ending one’s life.” (Holinger 1994). Suicide is the third leading cause of death for the 15 to 24 year olds, and the sixth leading cause for 5 to 14 year olds. About 5,000 teenagers kill themselves every year. The thought of killing oneself as a solution for problems at school is common for grade school and college students. On the grade school level, 9% think of suicide, 2% seriously consider suicide, and 1% percent attempts it. On the...