Detecting and Preventing Suicide among Teenagers

Melissa Ridenour

According to both the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Center for Disease Control, suicide is the third leading cause of death for youth ages 15 to 24. Teen suicide affects everyone. Family and friends feel a guilty sense that if they had only done something different, the suicide could have been prevented. Therefore, it’s important to understand its causes, how to detect potential suicidal vulnerability, and how to help prevent it.

Causes of Teen Suicide
As teens grow up, they often feel stress, self-doubt, confusion, social and interaction problems with friends, peer pressure, concerns about succeeding, and pressure to meet parental expectations. Some teens suffer from clinical depression as well. Most teenagers experience such feelings to a certain degree at some point in their growing years. Those who are overwhelmed with such feelings and are unable to deal with them are more at risk for suicide.

There are several causes for teenagers to potentially want to take their own lives. Anxiety or depression left untreated can be a contributing factor. Feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and worthlessness can cause teenagers to contemplate ending their lives. Other contributing factors are lack of success in school, bullying at school, violence at home, divorce, death of a loved one, rejection by peers, and the suicide of a friend.

According to the Center for Disease Control, such pressures of life make it too difficult for some teens to cope. As a result, sometimes overwhelmed teens welcome suicide as an escape from the pressure and pain.

Detecting Teen Depression and Potentially Suicidal Teens
According the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, parents should be on the lookout for specific signs in their children that could be indicators for a potential suicide risk. Such indicators include withdrawal from family and friends, as well as a lack of interest in activities the teens formerly enjoyed. Parents should look for any change in eating and sleeping habits or in hygiene and personal appearance.

In addition, parents should watch for personality changes and rebellious or violent behavior. Difficulty concentrating, decline in the quality of school work, and persistent boredom and malaise are possible signs as well. Persistent complaints of stomach aches, headaches and fatigue could be symptoms of emotional problems that can be signs of potential suicidal tendencies.

Equally important signs to watch for include statements from teens that they are bad and that they feel terrible inside. Other verbal hints include such statements as, “I won’t be a problem for you much longer. It’s no use. Nothing matters anyway.” Such statements from teens are clear indicators that they may be at least contemplating suicide.

If teenagers start giving away cherished possessions or throwing away favorite belongings, a way of getting their affairs in order, parents should consider such behavior an indicator of the risk for suicide. In addition, parents should watch for any signs of hallucinations or bizarre or strange thoughts.

Teen Suicide Prevention
According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, if teens threaten to commit suicide, parents should take the threat seriously and immediately seek professional help from a qualified mental health professional. Parents should not hesitate to ask their teens if they have suicidal thoughts. Such a question will not put the idea into children’s heads, but will, instead, assure teens that someone cares and open up an opportunity for discussion about it.

Parents should determine if their teens are suffering from depression and, if so, get medical treatment for the depression. Counseling is a good preventive strategy for depressed or potentially suicidal teens as well. Counseling can provide teens with coping strategies for dealing with their life problems. Frequently, once teens learn how to cope with problems, their suicidal desires dissipate.

It is essential for parents to treat their teens with understanding, compassion and respect. Parents should demonstrate unconditional love, offer emotional support, and make their teens feel important, loved and wanted. Parents should demonstrate to their teens that overcoming their problems and life challenges is possible and that they will help them with such challenges.

Resources
Related information can be found in the articles, “Coping with a Bully: How to Stop Bullying” and “Strategies for Dealing with a Bully Dilemma”. The article, “Dealing with Grief” provides related information about dealing with the death of a loved one.

Custodian’s stress-disorder suit restored

Meghann M. Cuniff / Staff writer

A custodian who sued her school district after being forced to clean up the bloody scene of a student’s suicide had her lawsuit reinstated Tuesday by the Washington Court of Appeals.

Debbie Rothwell, who still works at Lakeside High School in Nine Mile Falls, suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a lawsuit filed in May 2007 by her lawyer, William Powell, of Spokane. The 16-year-old student shot himself in the head inside the school’s main entrance in 2004. The lawsuit was dismissed in January 2008 by Spokane County Superior Court Judge Greg Sypolt, who ruled the incident was covered by the Industrial Insurance Act.

But the Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 ruling, disagreed and reinstated the suit.

“There are people who do clean up the mess after one of these horrible murders or suicides happen,” Powell said Tuesday, referring to private professionals. “But the superintendent in this case chose not to do that. He should have known better.”

Along with former Superintendent Michael Green, now superintendent of the Woodland School District in Western Washington, the lawsuit names the Nine Miles Falls School District, Stevens County Sheriff Craig Thayer, two sheriff’s detectives and an unidentified man as defendants.

None was available for comment. Like most civil suits in Washington, the complaint seeks unspecified damages.

Rothwell’s complaints center around her task of cleaning up the suicide scene, then being asked to move a backpack she later learned belonged to the victim and contained a suspicious device that authorities detonated using a robot.

She stayed at work until after 4 a.m., cleaning the mess of blood, brain and bone alone, becoming “emotionally distraught and physically ill” before returning to the school less than four hours later at Green’s orders to serve cookies and coffee to grieving students and keep the media from the school, according to the suit.

At issue in the court decisions was whether Rothwell’s claim of post-traumatic stress disorder fell under the industrial injury act, which prohibits lawsuits based on industry injury or occupational disease.

Judges John A. Schultheis and Dennis J. Sweeney ruled it didn’t because it wasn’t the result of one work order. Her trauma grew over several days, according to their written opinion. Judge Teresa C. Kulik dissented.