3. TEENAGE SUICIDE... it doesn't have to end like this

The article Teenage Wasteland brings up a very sensitive topic based upon young individual’s problems which certainly become a society’s issue when it comes to teenage suicide. Donna Ganies highlighted teenage suicides in her article.

On 11/03/1987 four teenager’s ages between 16-19, found dead in a car due to carbon monoxide poisoning. Nobody dug deeper in the issue why these four young people committed suicide; instead they call these young people with different names. Teenager’s brain is still not completely developed to get a better understanding of societies good or bad influences, scientists prove that an individual’s brain is fully developed at the age of 25. So, it’s hard for a teenager to take all of the pressure and burden society and their peers throw at them while their brain is still developing. Author excerpt in her article that, In America teenage suicides was a virtually nonexistent category prior to 1960 and during 1950 to 1980 it was tripled. Most of the suicides happened at the age of 15-24 between teenage to youth. These suicides happens because of social stigma, drugs, car crashed (DWI). The reason behind every suicide is use of drugs and alcohol, because the teenagers are not mature enough to deal with their social problems weather they are in their families or either outside. Suicide became more common in white kids than black. Suicides usually happen in lower middle class and upper class. The reason because of extreme poverty and in upper class it is because of social issues, drugs and alcohol. These two extreme class differences explain the reason with in itself.

We never pay close attention to the reason why suicide is common among teenager, bullying is one of the main cause of suicide in teenagers. Poverty also plays a major role in suicide attempt; children who are not being able to keep up with their peers, they get heartbroken, disturbed. The pressure built gradually and it affects them psychologically.
our society like’s to label people without even knowing the facts, without even putting own self in their shoes, just like in the article when people labeled those four teenagers with different names instead of taking the issue seriously and thinking about what made those teenager do something as extreme as suicide, why they stood outside the norm and took that step. It all comes to culture and society we move in, in the end it is the societies who make people do that.

The story of these teenagers reminds me of a personal story which I can never forget. My friend she committed suicide at the age of 13, because she was obese. Her sickness lead to obesity, she couldn’t work out because she had major arthritis but people at school called her names all the kids at school used to laugh at her. She secretly stopped taking her medication which intensified her sickness and she died. I can’t forget her ever she was a bright student she didn’t harm anyone but people didn’t like her just because she was different and a bit older than her classmates. Sometimes you don’t realize that your hatred could lead someone to take their life.

Suicide is becoming a major issue nowadays more and more people are trying to take this path thinking as if it’s the easy way out. In this article Donna also describes some figures of suicides around the world. In Guyana 1978, where over 900 followers of Jim Jones poisoned themselves, fearing that their community would be destroyed. This issue of suicide does not only concern a nation this is an international problem which needs to be taken much more seriously.