Underlying causes in richest countries in the world
One of the great joys of life is the absence of television early in life. Between then and now I have watched television; but for some years now, I have had no television reception in my home as I find television boring, crass, banal, uninspiring and unenlightening.
For today’s youth the story is lacks joy. Youth sadly—and often harmful to their health—seem welded to mass media’s banality due to uninformed choice or educator/parental indifference, or both. Sometimes serial suicides happen and questions finally rise, as has happened in Britain after close succession of more than 15 youth suicides.
On the BBC Radio Four program "Any Questions" the panel was asked "How can it be that in one of the richest countries in the world young people seemingly have so little to live for?"
A sixteen year old rose from the audience and addressed the question in terms of a perilous "monotony in life." Everything is scripted by someone else. "Entertainment is made for us," he said. "We are given what we are meant to do—here’s a computer game, you can play it.... Our schools are dedicated to results. .. But "we need to access the more spiritual and .... more personal needs." In the past "people used to play; they used play to make their own entertainment—that’s gone." Sadly.
Why do youth kill themselves? Is the collective mass media to blame—television, celebrity, American Idol, the Internet? Things? Loss of creative play? Parenting? "Recession/Depression? "Schools? Religion? War? The cheapening of life and its destruction by leading figures whom youth can’t help but notice? What are the underlying causes of youth suicide?
But before speculating on that I want to widen the scope of suicide as destruction that extends farther than self-inflicted death by methods such as suffocation, poisoning, and gun shot.
Suicide is also what comes after the shot: after one person inflicts a lethal wound on someone else. We learned this week that 1in 100 Americans have been incarcerated. Prison is a kind of death and, for ordinary people, being an ex-convict is also the end of life. Killers who are not mercenaries on government payrolls or police or occupiers, killers without powerful lawyers and other powerhouses go to prison; they are convicted and executed. If not executed they die in prison or are released one day without rehabilitation or skill, and bereft of rights and standing in a society that fears them and wants them to disappear. Life is over any way you look at it There is more than one way to destroy one’s life.
Gun Violence
The U.S. Department of Justice reports that after 1980 gun involvement in homicides occurring while committing a felony — such as rape, robbery, burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft, arson, and violations of prostitution and commercial vice laws, other sex offenses, narcotic drug laws, and gambling laws— rose from 55 percent (1985) to 77 percent (2005).
In 2003, murders of young people averaged 15 a day: 5,570 ages 10 to 24 were murdered. Eighty-two percent of the those killed, according to a 2006 CDC report, were killed with firearms.
A 2004 national survey, also reported by the Centers for Disease Control, found that 17 percent of high school students surveyed admitted carrying a weapon (gun, knife or club) once or twice in the 30-day period preceding the survey.
Suicide
Britain is not the only rich nation with a crisis in youth hangings. The third leading cause of death among U.S. adolescents in 2004 was suicide. The preferred methods were hanging/suffocation, poisoning, and firearms. Hanging/suffocation and poisoning suicides increased among girls ten to fourteen years old. Even more young people tried and failed to end their lives: Among youth attending public and private school grades 9 through 12 , 17 percent reported seriously considering suicide; 13 percent reported creating a plan; 8 percent reported trying to take their own life in the12-month period preceding the national survey reporting.
The question is why. In the taking of one’s life, is there more than one victim and more than one killer? What underlies or precedes annihilation?
Extending the perilous life as monotony thoughts of the sixteen year old who rose from the "Any Questions" audience, U.S. psychologists said sadly to National Public Radio last week that "Most kids today spend a lot of time doing three things: watching television, playing video games, and taking lessons. [But] none of these activities promote self-regulation." And "Self-regulation is a critical skill for kids."
Kids need to self talk they said. "Speaking spontaneously to themselves" children "guide and manage their own behavior; verbal activity while engaging in challenging tasks "fosters concentration, effort, problem-solving, and task success" and should be permitted and encouraged said Illinois State University’s Laura Berk.
In addition to what children must do in their creative play and effort to keep them psychologically fit, schools must also do their part, said "Any Questions" panelist and head of the Royal Society of Arts Matthew Taylor. Schools are partly responsible for youth’s healthy presence of mind.
"[There] are ... issues around psychological well being which are not fundamentally being addressed in schools," Taylor said. "Young people face different kinds of challenges in relation to the way in which families are changing, the ubiquity of the modern media and information, diversity of society and ... schools are going to have to take on much more of a task in relation to the emotional resilience and psychological well being of young people.
"[Schools] ... do really interesting stuff in relation to standards, there’s some innovation... in the curriculum but they still feel as institutions pretty dysfunctional.
"I think if there was one thing that we could attend to, which ... would have a small impact … upon the general well being of young people, [it] is … to make sure that schools were intelligent communities which built up young people’s sense of self esteem and self worth."
Sources:
Transcript: Any Questions? 22 February 2008: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/anyquestions_transcripts_20080222shtm. "The Evolution of Play" The Bryant Park Project, February 22, 2008: NPR reporter Alix Spiegel reported on how play has shifted focus from ‘activity’ to ‘things.’ www.npr.org. "Questions raised over gun crime" Following a Teenage Shooting and Killing March 19, 2005: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk/. "Gun violence in the United States" From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Source: FBI, Supplementary Homicide Reports, 1976-2005. Bureau of Justice Statistics. www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/ Send comments to askbjs@usdoj.gov. OJP Freedom of Information Act page. Legal Policies and Disclaimers. Page last revised on July 11, 2007. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/tables/circumguntab.htm#numbers. "Youth Violence: Fact Sheet" page modified:April 19, 2007, at http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/yvfacts.htm.
http://www.cdc.gov/print.do?url=http%
http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/yvfacts.htm.
http://www.neahin.org/programs/schoolsafety/gunsafety/statistics.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/datastatistics/archive/youthsuicide.html
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http://news.bbc.co.uk
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March 7, 2008 By Carolyn Bennett Http://journals.aol.com/cwriter85/todaysmissingnews/ Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett, Writer, Independent journalist, Educator. Author of Women's Work and Words Altering World Order published 2008 by iUniverse. Hardback ISBN 978-0-595-70449-1; paperback ISBN 978-0-595-46712-9 .. (http://www.iuniverse.com]
