Life Lines. To be or not to be? It's a question that's thundered throughout history and one that pulses inside each of us, at one time or another in our lives. Still, never has its pulse been more profound or its pull more compelling than for young people in America today.
Just consider some numbers. They're taken from recent surveys of college and high school students by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control:
27 percent of high-school students said they'd "thought seriously" about suicide in the past year; 8 percent said they'd actually tried to kill themselves.
10.3 percent of U.S. college students admitted serious thoughts of suicide; 6.7 percent had a suicide plan.
And today's teen-and-young-adult suicide epidemic isn't just a statistical blip, either, or a case of media hype. The numbers of both suicide attempts and fatalities have risen steadily in the '90s, following similar jumps in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s. Today, an estimated 276,000 kids between the ages of 14 and 17 try killing themselves each year, and more than 5,000 succeed. The current rate is four times that of 1950.
The numbers are disturbing, and yet they only partially convey the tragedy of teen and young adult suicide, since every victim leaves a hole in the fabric of their communities and schools, and an ongoing ache in the hearts of their families and friends.
The epidemic is cause for concern--and for a new commitment to ending its spread. Because the real tragedy of youthful suicide is that it often can be prevented, if we know what to look for and care enough to act. Because stopping suicide starts with understanding the pain that suicidal people feel and helping them understand that they're not alone.
[Nancy Merritt, Do It Now Foundation (May, 2000)]
