Teen Suicide example essay topic

Causes of teenage suicide Every year thousands of youth in the United States die, not by car accidents or diseases, but by their own hands. Every 90 seconds a teenager commits suicide. Suicide is the third leading cause of death among 15 to 25 year olds. Suicide accounts for 12 percent of the mortality in the adolescent and young adult group.

Males are more likely than females to follow through with suicide. For every successful suicide there are fifty to one hundred adolescent suicide attempts. More than five percent of all teenagers try to commit suicide. Many factors contribute to teenage suicide. Most teens who attempt suicide are in a deep depression. This depression can be caused by two major factors.

These include stress and significant loss. Stress causes most depression. Stress itself has many factors. Two of them include pressure to succeed and stress from relationships. The pressure to succeed may be to get high grades, get a good job, be accepted into a prestige college, or to excel, "win" in sports.

The significant loss may be of a job, loved one, or health. Equally important to depression is low self esteem. We live in a society that emphasizes a high standard of beauty. The newspapers, magazines, movies, and television are all filled with images of beautiful, "perfect " people. For example, Cindy Crawford, she has done numerous advertisements for things such as makeup and she has even written a book about makeup and beauty. You can also look in any of the teen magazines or "People" magazine and find some of these images.

Because of these images some people believe they can't be beautiful in their own way and therefore have low self esteem. Another factor is teens being neglected by their parents. Most households have two working parents. The parents today are so rarely home that they spend little or no time talking to their children.

In some cases teens may not receive the needed praise for a job well done. Such as getting an "A"on a test or hitting a home run in a baseball game. Sometimes the children feel their parents don't understand when they are trying to express feelings of frustration or failure. This contributes to feelings of neglect. Some suicide attempts result from problems in the home. Teens with recently divorced or separated parents may think they caused it and get down on themselves.

Teens abused by their parents either verbally or physically may develop feelings of inadequacy and turn toward suicide. Yet another factor that may attribute to teen suicide is chemical abuse. Many drugs are depressants. The most popular of these being alcohol and pot. These drugs alter moods and may cause teens to contemplate ending their lives. These suicides are almost accidents because the person is not in a good state of mind.

These are the saddest. The epidemic of teen suicide continues to spread. Suicide will never completely be ended, but with focus on prevention, it may not be every 90 seconds that a teenager commits suicide and suicide will not account for 12 percent of the mortality in adolescents. With this focus on prevention, all the numbers of suicides can drop substantially.