I had suicidal ideation by the age of 10… meaning I was feeling sad, lonely and severely stressed and I saw my eventual death as an end to and preferable to the daily struggles I faced. But, even with suicidal ideation, or ideas of preferring death to life… it never occurred to me to actually end my life at the age of 10. My embracing the idea of death at such a young age use to put me as a far outlier in terms of society and how children thought and felt. Today we have 10 year old kids actually committing suicide.
Two days ago it was reported that a 10 year old girl was found dead after committing suicide. Read that again… a 10 year old girl was found dead after committing suicide. Bullying is rumored to have played a role in her suicide. Suicide is the second leading cause of death for teenagers in the United States.
This 2010 CDC brief lists suicide as the 3rd leading cause of death for teens in the US behind homicide and “unintentional injury.”
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db37.htm
By 2017 suicide had surpassed homicide to become the 2nd leading cause of death for teens in the US.
The suicide rate among people ages 10 to 24 years old climbed 56% between 2007 and 2017, according to the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/youth-suicide-rate-rises-56-in-decade-cdc-says-11571284861
This country needs to wake the fuck up! We need to realize that despite all of our “modern advances” children are just as cruel, if not more so, than they have always been. In fact, some of these so called advances probably play a significant role in the increased suicide rates of teens… Specifically I am referring to social media. When I was a kid we may have had to deal with a bully in a certain class or during recess, but when we went home the bully wasn’t there. With the advent of social media the bullies can be present 24/7 creating an inescapable stress bomb that pushes many kids to killing themselves or killing others.
Bullying isn’t the only ill of social media. Children today become obsessed with the number of “likes” they get on Instagram. Imagine thinking of killing yourself because you didn’t get enough likes on a photo… WTF? The social pressures created by social media are huge and potentially deadly.
We as a society also need to finally admit that the current medical model for depression and suicide just doesn’t work. Taking a little yellow pill isn’t going to fix what’s wrong despite this messaging from Big Pharma for the past 30 years. Doctors and pharmaceutical companies have gotten rich off of our misery and what they offer DOES NOT WORK!
Neuroscientists who study suicide and depression have known for 10+ years that SSRI “antidepressants” do not work. There have been books and numerous articles published about the false claims made by SSRI manufacturers. There have also been numerous articles written about things that do work, or at least work better than SSRIs… such as working out 3x a week. Yes, working out for half an hour 3x a week works better than taking an SSRI if you are depressed.
For Depression, Prescribing Exercise Before Medication
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/03/for-depression-prescribing-exercise-before-medication/284587/
Aerobic activity has shown to be an effective treatment for many forms of depression. So why are so many people still on antidepressants?
Here is an interesting article from the Mayo Clinic about exercising and depression/anxiety…
There is much more that is wrong with the current medical model of suicide and I will continue to discuss this in my next post… but for now, we as a society need to decide if we care that our children are killing themselves at an alarming and ever increasing rate… and if we do care and want to change it, we as a society are going to have to face some hard truths and fight powerful entities that have made alot of money off the current model.