Succubous

“Kill yourself. Kill yourself.“

Imagine those thoughts waking you up for one week straight.

Now put yourself between the sheets as a female–age range 10-24 years-and wake with those same words as your mental alarm clock. “Kill yourself. Kill yourself.“

Suicide is on the rise among our young people.

The report released by the Center for Disease Control was a surprise to me only because the increase in the suicide rate among young women was not higher. In fact, the cited statistics–reflecting an 8 percent increase in the years 2003-2004–are three years too late in the detection of this disturbing trend.

• The biggest increase was in the suicide rate for 10- to 14-year-old girls. There were 94 suicides in that age group in 2004, compared to 56 in 2003, a 67 percent increase. The rate is still low — fewer than one per 100,000 population.
• Suicide rates among older teen girls, those aged 15-19 shot up 32 percent; rates for males in that age group rose 9 percent.

The reasoning behind suicide can not be attributed to a single source; however, the warning signs include mental illness, alcohol and drug use, family dysfunction and relationship problems. A nasty prescription Xanax addiction attributed to the suicide ideation that so disturbed the sleep of the young woman mentioned at the beginning of this post. Fortunately, she spoke up instead of acting out on the actions of her brain that had lost its way due to the side effects of prescription drug abuse.

Brain development could prove a factor in the loss of our young people, both female and male.

The National Institute of Mental Health calls the teenage brain “a work in progress”.

• The University of Wisconsin-Madison Medical School reports that “the risk of injury and death is higher in adolescence than in childhood or adulthood, and the incident of depression, anxiety, drug use and addiction, and eating disorders increases…It is clear that adolescents think and act differently than adults.

The teen brain is not yet hard-wired to fully wrap around the decision making process, to fully think out the ramifications of their own impulsive actions.

Teens process emotions differently than adults. Period. Add drugs, alcohol, peer pressure or any other succubous, and what’s left to work with is a kid’s ticking time bomb of a brain–complete with seething promise–if he–or she–can just get past the ravage nature of their own physiological development.

<crossposted from The Crone Speaks>