The Youth Suicide Hysteria

[Modern School]

In honor of the one-year anniversary of Modern School, I am reposting some of my favorite articles from the past year. The following is a very short piece, but it represents one of my favorite themes: debunking common misperceptions about youth.

Teenagers are routinely portrayed as irresponsible risk takers and drug abusers who have rampant unprotected sex, contract STDs, get pregnant and kill themselves in droves. All of these are gross exaggerations. In fact, rates of pregnancy, STDs, drug abuse and suicide for teenagers have all been steadily declining and are generally lower than the rates for their parents' generation.


Youth Suicide Hysteria
Youth suicide rates are at the lowest levels ever recorded, with today's rate less than half that of 40 years ago. Youth suicide rates are far lower than adults, too.Only 1 in 2500 teens (13-19) kill themselves, whereas 1 in 900 parent-aged adults do.

While teen suicide, indeed all suicide, is tragic, what is generally not discussed, are the actual reasons for it. In today's media, we have been barraged with accounts of teens taking their own lives after being bullied, yet a far more common trend among teen suicides in not a history of bullying, but a history of living in an abusive family, according to Mike Males

Modern School
http://modeducation.blogspot.com/2011/10/youth-suicide-hysteria.html

[chollybocker]

1. Hysteria. Yuh.

"...accounts of teens taking their own lives after being bullied, yet a far more common trend among teen suicides in ((sic)) not a history of bullying, but a history of living in an abusive family,..."

Care to clarify this *important* distinction for us?