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Causes and effects of teen suicide in today’s society
Introduction to teen suicide
Causes and effects of teen suicide in today’s society
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Suicide amongst young people has increased greatly in the past 25 years in the US( young men and women 15-24)
Women and suicide has increased the least with 250 percent, men has soared to over 300 percent. The US is now ranked the highest in the world for suicide.
Until recently suicide amongst the young men and women accounted for less than 5 percent of suicide. It has increased with the increase in population of youth. Young men 15-24 now account for more than 20 percent of the male suicides. Young women are responsible for 14 percent of women suicides. So approximately 7,000 women commit suicide a year and males are up to 20,000 suicides, yearly.
Even though youth suicides get the most attention, people believe suicide amongst the older people does not happen. But, reality check, it does. A considerable amount of suicides are done by older people seeking to end a life of pain. people aged 50 and older make up almost 39 percent of the yearly suicide count. Even though people aged 50 and over only account for 26 percent of the US population.
White males are the highest to date. They account for
10 percent of the population, but manage to account for almost 28 percent of the yearly deaths by suicide. For some strange reason, white males are higher on the suicide charts than any other race and sex. They are more open to this, even though they don’t ...
"Suicide in the U.S.: Statistics and Prevention." NIMH RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2014.
There have been many instances of suicide that have occurred in the past years at universities across the country, and since it is such a sensitive subject, there have not been nearly enough coverage as this topic deserves, considering this issue does not seem to be going away. When collecting data about suicide statistics, the age range is broken down as people ages 15-24, which spans most developmental years. Within this bracket are college-age students and this age-group has by far the most troubling statistics around it.
According to Fowler, Crosby, Parks, and Ivey (2013), suicide and nonfatal suicidal ideations are significant public health concerns for adolescents and young adults. While the onset of suicidal behaviors is observed as young as six years of age, rates of death and nonfatal injury resulting from suicidal behavior are moderately low until 15 years of age (Fowler et al., 2013). According to Fowler et al (2013), the most current available statistics in the United States (U. S.) reported suicide as the third leading cause of death among youth aged 10-14 and 15-19 years, and it was the second leading cause of death among persons aged 20-24 years.
A mother finds her 17 year old teenage son hanging from the rafters of their basement. To hear of this occurrence is not rare in society today. Every 90 minutes a teenager in this country commits suicide. Suicide is the third leading cause of death for 15-24 year olds. The National suicide rate has increased 78% between 1952 and 1992. The rate for 15-19 year olds rose from two per 100,000 to 12.9, more than 600 percent. (Special report, Killing the Pain, Rae Coulli)
“Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” - Phil Donahue. As a complex, tragic public health issue, suicide occurs in men significantly more often than in women. Suicide is simply defined as the act of intentionally ending one’s own life, but the factors that play into a person making that decision are anything but simple. The most obvious and severe effect of suicide is the loss of a valuable, meaningful human life. According to Harvard School of Public Health (n.d.), suicide affects parents, children, siblings, friends, lovers and spouses; the loss for society is psychological, spiritual, and financial. People who lose a loved one to suicide often experience devastating effects and deal with a complex grief. These “suicide survivors” typically feel a range of emotions from sadness, blame, and guilt to extreme anger and confusion. “Suicide among males is four times higher than among females and represents 79% of all U.S. suicides” (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, 2012). This gender paradox is one of the most compelling components regarding who is most at risk to attempt suicide. Why is it that men commit suicide more often than women? More than four times as many men as women die by suicide because depressed men are less likely to seek out help, men typically use more violent, lethal methods and cannot be resuscitated, and men carry the pressure of employment, providing for and protecting a family, and maintaining relationships.
As the rate of suicides increases in our nation, it has risen consistently with white males leading the way, as shown in figures 1 and 2. There are many theories behind what is driving this, however there are no hard facts behind any of these theories and there is still no concrete reason why white males are more prone to commit suicide.
The natural end of every human life is death. Some people, for reasons that have never been fully understood, choose to end their own lives. This is called suicide, which means literally ?self-killing?. For all the uncertainty that has surrounded the phenomenon of suicide, this assessment of the problem is probably as accurate as any. The individual seemingly hopeless conflict with the world, decides to end his or her existence in what amounts to a final assault against a society that can no longer be tolerated. In so doing, the person tries to obtain a final revenge on everything and everyone that has caused their feelings of depression.
Death, its such an unexpected thing that happens to everyone at some point in their life. Some people die old, some go young. Others go without warning, just disappear from our lives without explanation. No letter, note or goodbye, they just leave us to never return. Death, or in this situation suicide. Such a horrible thing to the average person to lose someone that way. Never knowing why they did it, left with loose ends that will never be tied up. For others its a glorious thing, the accept it as a way of life or something that has to be done to “save” them or their family. Suicide is looked differently in a particular culture compared to how americans see it. The samurais see it as honor to them or their loved ones after dishonoring them. To them its not something to be feared but to be excepted, death in this form will bring back honor so that their families don't have to suffer in their lives. In America though suicide is seen as such a horrible thing. We don't understand why someone would take their life so soon, what would push them to decide to end their life? Most americans fear death, they can't stare him in the eye and except what is going to happen to them, but some few stare at death and welcome him. Every person, culture, state, country sees suicide in a different way. Either in Peace, honor and respect or as something unexplainable and all too sudden, some might even just see it as something that happened and never second guess it. How ever a person and place may view it we are all impacted the same way.
The elderly are estimated to be about 12.5% of the population and according to the National Institute of Aging (NIA), the elderly accounted for about 15.7% of all suicides deaths. In 2007, the rate of suicide for the elderly was about 14.3 per 100,000. The numbers add up to one elderly committing suicide every 97 minutes. Among those that are 65 and older, there were about 14.9 per 100,000 reported...
As this society undergoes many changes in the social aspects, the suicide rate is also on the rise. Japan now has the third highest suicide rate in the world, around sixty percent higher than most western countries. Most of these tragic deaths are committed by school kids and young adults. Some old customs are still in place and are making it difficult for these kids to express how they feel and receive the help they need. This tragedy is not only affecting children, the leading cause of death for men from ages twenty to forty four is
When researchers looked at a sample size of men and women in the military between 2000 to 2010, they found that females between 18 to 29 in age had a 12 times greater likelihood of killing themselves than the civilian population of females. The study analyzed more than 173,969 suicides from both men and women.
In 2014, there were 42,773 deaths by suicide in the United States. Though suicide rates decreased from 1990-2000 from 12.5 suicides per 100,000 to 10.4 per 100,000, over the past decade, however, the rate has again increased to 12.1 per 100,000. Every day, approximately 105 Americans die by suicide and there is nearly one death by suicide in the U.S. every 12.3 minutes. (CDC). There is one suicide for every estimated 25 suicide attempts and one suicide for every estimated 4 suicide attempts in the elderly. (CDC). Suicide takes the lives of over 38,000 Americans every year and only an estimated quarter of a million people each year become suicide survivors. (AAS).
to 24 year of age. Trends in rates of suicides for teens 15 to 19 years old
Now the eighth-leading cause of death overall in the U.S. and the third-leading cause of death for young people between the ages of 15 and 24 years, suicide has become the subject of much recent focus. U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher, for instance, recently announced his Call to Action to Prevent Suicide, 1999, an initiative intended to increase public awareness, promote intervention strategies, and enhance research. The media, too, has been paying very close attention to the subject of suicide, writing articles and books and running news stories. Suicide among our nation’s youth, a population very vulnerable to self-destructive emotions, has perhaps received the most discussion of late. Maybe this is because teenage suicide seems the most tragic—lives lost before they’ve even started. Yet, while all of this recent focus is good, it’s only the beginning. We cannot continue to lose so many lives unnecessarily.
Suicide is the third leading cause of death for 15 to 24 year olds, and the sixth leading cause for 5 to 14 year olds. Suicide accounts for twelve percent of the mortality in the adolescent and young adult group. Young males are more common than young woman suicides. These are only children who followed through with the suicide. For every successful suicide there are fifty to one hundred adolescent suicide attempts. In other words, more than five percent of all teenagers tried to commit suicide, and the number is still rising. It is scary to think that four percent of high school students have made a suicide attempt within the previous twelve months. In a small safe town like Avon, in the Avon High School where you and I practically live, you can see the faces of 22 students that have tried to commit suicide. That is enough to fill a classroom.