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Student death prompts suicide awareness
Seventeen years ago today Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain was found dead in his Seattle home after committing suicide. His death rocked young people across the country and sparked a rash of copycat suicides.
According to the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, suicides among young people continue to be a serious problem. Each year in the U.S., thousands of teenagers commit suicide. Suicide is the third leading cause of death for 15-to-24-year-olds, and the sixth leading cause of death for 5-to-14-year-olds. Continue reading »
Recent findings out of Johns Hopkins Children’s Center indicate that “losing a parent to suicide makes children more likely to die by suicide themselves and increases their risk of developing a range of major psychiatric disorders.” Researchers estimate that between 7,000 and 12,000 children annually lose a parent to suicide. The same study also showed that “losing a parent, regardless of cause, increased a child’s risk of committing a violent crime.”
Though children of suicide are three times more likely to kill themselves than children with living parents, most will go on to lead healthy lives. “Children are surprisingly resilient,” says Holly C. Wilcox, a psychiatric epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. “A loving, supporting environment and careful attention to any emerging psychiatric symptoms can offset even such a major stressor as a parent’s suicide.”
Related findings include that a child under age 13 whose parent died suddenly in an accident is twice as likely to commit suicide. Children under 13 who lose a parent to illness do not have an increased risk for suicide, but have a 40 percent higher risk for hospitalization due to depression. Continue reading »
Friends and supporters of Phoebe Prince have begun a campaign to craft anti-bullying legislation in her honor.
The young Irish immigrant who committed suicide in January, after being viciously bullied by for months by popular girls at her school. The incident sparked a national outcry, and criminal charges against 9 of the students involved.
The suicide of Phoebe Prince after she was extensively bullied by her peers at a Massachusetts high school has reverberated through the country.
Schools are examining their recess rules to control bullying. MySpace and Facebook are being freshly scrutinized with an eye to the dangers posed by peers. And yesterday, nine of the students involved in bullying Phoebe were charged with criminal offenses.
Today, Slate’s Emily Bazelon asks, “What about the adults who knew what was happening?”
Mean girls. Those pretty, popular, cool girls who use their social power to hurt those less blessed by social fortune.
The specter of a popular, predatory prom queen taking down the class nerd with a cutting remark or vicious prank is the stuff of legend, many popular movies, and sometimes a sad fact of real life.
That kind of cruelty isn’t just for prom anymore. An article in the Boston Globe explores how girls are practicing “mean girl” tactics on the playground.
A few months ago, young teen Hope Witsell was found hanging in her bedroom. Her suicide was apparently a response to relentless bullying at school following an incident in which she sent a topless photo of herself to a boy, who showed it around the school.
Witsell was punished by her parents and by school administrators for her “crime”, and the taunting by her classmates continued unabated into a new school year.
Was this death by sexting?
In the town where much of the computer industry was born and where many young people barely old enough to drink have made fortunes and retired, concerned parents are standing guard near the tracks where commuter trains pass by twice an hour. They’re not there to protect wildlife nor are they there to warn cars of a broken crossing gate. They stand their vigil to prevent teenagers from committing suicide by stepping in front of a train.
Lori Garcia 
Joslyn Gray 
Amber Doty 
Julianna Miner 
Monica Bielanko 
Sierra Black 
Meredith Carroll 
Carolyn Castiglia 
Sunny Chanel 
Madeline Holler 
Rebecca Odes 
Danielle Smith 
Danielle Sullivan 
Katherine Stone 
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