Parenting

Just because young people have not accumulated that much experience of life, does not mean they cannot understand what is going on, or that they will not feel profound grief and despair. In fact, it often means that they feel it more keenly. Unlike adults, who have been through bad times and so know that eventually you do feel better, young people have no way of anticipating the fading of this awful pain. Whatever you may say in comfort, they are sure that such agony will never pass. You can look back half a lifetime and remember a crisis of 15 to 20 years ago, and be reassured by the fact that you survived it. Half a lifetime to a teenager is measured in years, not decades, and a few months seems an eternity.

We tend to take teenage moods fairly lightly. Adolescents spend so much time going into apparently deep depressions which are often hormonally produced blue moods or impulsive and short-lived responses to arguments with friends - that we often miss the transition to a genuine and longer lasting misery. An extra crisis can be the final straw to an already overwrought teenager, and they can slide into the paralyzing grip of real depression.

Full-blown depression is characterized by lethargy, inertia and carelessness about appearance and well-being. Of course, it is not always easy to spot when these are the symptoms of a real problem since all young people can go through stages of being apparently lazy, slatternly and sullen. We sometimes feel that only adults are capable of feeling true despair, and that a suicide threat from a 'child' is silly, hysterical or merely attention-grabbing. The last may be true. There is no better way to focus attention than by killing oneself. Alas, such threats are often anything but silly, in that the throatiness can and do carry out their intention. Sometimes, suicide attempts that were supposed to make you take notice of their unhappiness, 'fail'. That is, instead of just frightening you, they bring about a death. But frequently, a young person's suicide bid is deadly serious, and is done with the full intention of removing them from what they see as an intolerable situation.

When a young person threatens to kill themselves, or starts 'saying farewell' in obvious ways, it is time to sit up and take notice. Forget the myth that those who threaten never do - a high proportion of people who kill themselves give clear warnings beforehand. Having received despairing letters from many young people whose threats and attempts to kill themselves have been dismissed as 'mere attention-grabbing', and who have been punished and told off rather than helped or comforted, I feel that we should re-examine our attitudes towards such behavior. Why should a young person not be given attention? Does being shown you are loved and cared for spoil you in any way? Selfish or arrogant behavior is found more neglected children that in those given affection and consideration. If this is the only way a young person can call for someone to look at them and listen to them, it is a pretty sad reflection on what has happened in the family up to that point. When we dismiss such desperation, how far are we hitting out as a means of salving our own guilt at letting it get this far?