During the adolescent period, young people go through a lot of changes and development. Some of these changes are easy to cope with, others cause stress and anxiety.
It is important to take any threat of suicide seriously. Talking about it, planning or having access to lethal substances/objects are all serious warning signs.
Risk Factors
A suicide among youth is often a result of a complex interaction between many risk factors. These include psychiatric disorders, mood changes and substance use. It is also linked to a number of psychosocial stressors, such as family problems, academic pressure and conflicts with parents. In addition, suicide often involves a certain amount of impulsiveness, especially when it comes to adolescents.
Adolescence is a time of great movement and change, with many different challenges in several domains at once. These can be very difficult to cope with. For example, a teen may experience conflicts with their parents, have trouble at school or feel like they don’t belong in their peer group.
A teen who suffers from a major psychiatric disorder such as schizophrenia or anorexia nervosa has an increased risk of suicide. These conditions can lead to delusions such as hearing voices telling them to kill themselves (auditory hallucinations). A loss of interest in things that used to be enjoyable, a dramatic weight loss or giving away items of value are other warning signs.
Signs and Symptoms
When teens are at risk of suicide, they often exhibit warning signs. These include changes in sleep or eating habits, increased irritability, withdrawal from friends and family, poor school performance and a preoccupation with death and suicide. They may also show drawings or references to death in homework, work samples or journals.
It is important to talk with your children, listen and pay attention. Don’t ignore threats to harm themselves or dismiss them as “attention-seeking.” Rather, talk about these issues openly and honestly and encourage your kids to seek help from a mental health professional if they are having suicidal thoughts.
It is also important to restrict access to lethal means of self-harm, such as over-the-counter medications, firearms and other weapons. Remind your kids that they can always come to you for support and be sure to check in with them frequently. If they are having suicidal thoughts, it is crucial to act quickly and get them immediate professional help.
Treatment
A person suffering from a mental illness that causes depression or suicidal feelings needs to be diagnosed and treated with a combination of medications and talk therapy. This may be available through family physicians, community mental health centers, mood disorders programs affiliated with universities and medical schools or local county or community psychiatric services.
If a youth is showing warning signs of suicide, such as current talk about suicide, preoccupation with death, giving away prized possessions or serious depression, parents should seek help for the child/adolescent. It is important to take all suicidal threats seriously, even if they seem irrational or trivial.
There are a number of effective prevention strategies, many of which focus on the school environment. These include gatekeeper training, outreach to families, immediate response and follow up for reported at-risk youth, and community psychoeducation. One randomized controlled trial found that a combined intervention of psychotherapy and medication reduced suicide attempts more than TAU (which included treatment or support already received by the young person). The combined group and individual therapy consisted of weekly sessions for 14 weeks.
Prevention
Suicide rates for adolescents fluctuate, but remain lower than rates for all older age groups. Prevention efforts focus on both risk factors and protective factors. Protective factors include family support and cohesion, peer support, cultural or religious beliefs that discourage suicide, healthy problem-solving skills, coping with conflict, and easy access to medical and mental health resources.
It’s important for parents, teachers, coaches, and other adults who spend time with children and teens to become educated about the warning signs of youth suicide. In addition, removing guns and other lethal tools from the home during a period when a youth is struggling with thoughts of self-harm can help prevent suicide.
Prevention programs for youths with high risk behaviors can be population-based (e.g., education on mental resilience, careful media coverage of suicide, limited access to means), or targeted toward high-risk subgroups (e.g., school-based programs, educating gatekeepers in different domains, adolescent-specific crisis hotlines and online help). Programs should be tailored to the specific needs of racial/ethnic minority and rural youth populations.