Teen Suicide Awareness

• 10,000 teens commit suicide each year.


• Over the past 25 years the rate of teen suicide has increased 300%.


• Suicide attempts occur more often in females than in males, the ratio is 9:1.


• Girls who attempt suicide tend to overdose on drugs or cut themselves.


• Completed suicide occurs more often in males than in females with a 3:1 ratio.


• Boys who commit suicide frequently use firearms and hanging.


• Suicide is a result of untreated depression. Many of the high-risk factors and some of the warning signs are the same for depression.

What’s even more alarming is there are websites glorifying suicide and even giving the “best” methods of doing it. An example of a slide I found in relation to this topic was from the UK organization, Papyrus (Prevention of Young Suicide). They explained that “online ‘advice’ about suicide ranges from --responsible organisations, the caring and sympathetic, neutral dissemination of information to outright predators.” They also said, “Out of 240 different websites 45 judged to be encouraging, promoting or facilitating suicide (Biddle and others - BMJ 2008).

Here is an example of a suicide method site:
500 feet of 3/4” rope;
Car, with at least a 286-NP 6-banger, with good tires. Known for excellent reliability, pick-up.
Case of beer, various tranquilizers.
Do up! Load up and party!
1. Tie one end of the rope securely to a huge tree.
2. Make a nice hangman’s noose in the other end of the rope.
3. Get in the car, run the rope in, and buckle-up, because it’s the law!
4. All buckled in nice and secure?

Well, now just put that ol’ hangman’s noose around your little neck, and pull the damn thing up tight.

I don’t know about you, but I think that’s pretty scary. However, monitoring social networks can help prevent some teen suicides. Two doctors would agree:

“Analysing posts on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook
could help to prevent suicide, according to two Victoria University
researchers.

Dr Tiong-Thye Goh and student assistant Yen-Pei Huang, both from the
School of Information Management at Victoria University, have devised a decision
support system to scan social networking sites to identify key words that people
aged between 18 and 24 are posting. A high proportion of key words could mean
that the blogger is at risk of depression, suicide, self-harm or harming
others.

"Social networking sites have in recent years become an increasingly
popular avenue for young people to express and to share their thoughts, views
and emotions," says Dr Goh.

"When young people are emotionally distressed for instance, instead of
the traditional channel of consulting friends, parents or specialists, social
networking blogs may provide a channel to share and release their emotions and
intentions.

A few months back, I wrote a post about an aunt who noticed warning signs from her depressed nephew. She reached out. It changed so many things about his life. McGruff Safeguard is here to help monitor any key words that would indicate your child may be contemplating this permanent fate. In the next post, we’re going to lay out some warning signs, and dive a bit deeper into suicide prevention. Together, we can help make a difference in someone’s life.

Labels: keywords, McGruff Safeguard, pro suicide websites, social media monitoring, teenage suicide