Teen Self-Harm: How to Recognize and Help

Understanding Teen Self-Harm and Suicide

What should you do if a teenager suddenly declares they don’t want to live? Are these just empty words, or should you be genuinely concerned? Anna Igorevna Solovey, a psychologist at the Minsk City Clinical Center for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, shares insights into the nature of teenage suicide and what parents should pay attention to.

The Alarming Rise of Teen Suicide

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Belarus is currently among the countries with high suicide rates. The past 15-20 years have seen a particularly troubling increase in teenage suicides. However, official statistics significantly underrepresent the actual numbers, approximately by a factor of four, as they only account for clear-cut cases. Forensic experts believe that many so-called “accidental deaths”—such as drug overdoses, car accidents, and falls—are often suicides in disguise. Additionally, unsuccessful suicide attempts, which are estimated to be 10-20 times more frequent than completed suicides, go unrecorded. In recent years, there has also been a rise in “mass suicides,” where two or more individuals are involved in a suicide attempt or completion.

The Risk Factors of Adolescence

Adolescence itself is a risk factor in the context of suicidal behavior. Emotional instability, which can lead to suicide, is considered a temporary character trait in nearly a quarter of healthy teenagers. Suicidal tendencies in adolescents exist at the intersection of child and adult behaviors, combining elements of both psychological states.

Children are known for their heightened impressionability, suggestibility, vivid emotions, mood swings, weak critical thinking skills, egocentrism, and impulsive decision-making. As they transition into adolescence, these traits persist, accompanied by an increased tendency for self-analysis and a pessimistic outlook on life and themselves. Teenage suicide is often driven by anger, protest, malice, or a desire for self-punishment or punishment of others.

Motives Behind Teen Suicide

Teenagers may contemplate or attempt suicide due to various motives, including:

• Feelings of resentment, loneliness, alienation, and misunderstanding
• Real or perceived loss of parental love, unrequited love, or jealousy
• Experiences related to the death, divorce, or departure of parents
• Feelings of guilt, shame, wounded pride, or self-blame
• Fear of disgrace, ridicule, or humiliation
• Fear of punishment or reluctance to apologize
• Romantic failures, sexual excesses, or pregnancy
• Feelings of revenge, malice, or protest
• Threats or blackmail
• Desire to attract attention, evoke sympathy, avoid unpleasant consequences, or escape difficult situations
• Sympathy or imitation of peers, book or movie characters

How Teenagers Perceive Suicide

Several characteristics of suicidal behavior in young people warrant special attention:

1. Inadequate Assessment of Consequences: Teenagers often have an abstract and detached perception of death, viewing it as something temporary, painless, and unrelated to their own lives, akin to sleep. They rarely foresee a fatal outcome and underestimate the irreversibility of death. The danger lies in the blurred line between genuine suicide attempts and demonstrative, blackmailing actions, which are both considered forms of suicidal behavior in practical terms.
2. Transient and Insignificant Motives: The fleeting and seemingly trivial reasons teenagers give for suicide attempts make it difficult to timely recognize suicidal tendencies, leading to unexpected cases even among those close to the individual.
3. Link to Deviant Behavior: Teenage suicide attempts are often associated with behaviors such as running away from home, truancy, early smoking, minor offenses, parental conflicts, alcohol and drug use, and sexual excesses.
4. Depressive States: In adolescents, depression manifests differently than in adults. Key signs include sadness, boredom, fatigue, sleep disturbances, somatic complaints, restlessness, excessive emotionality, withdrawal, inattentiveness, aggressive behavior, disobedience, rebellion, substance abuse, poor academic performance, and truancy.

The Contagious Nature of Suicide

When discussing suicidal behavior among teenagers, it’s crucial to consider the phenomenon of suicide imitation. In modern suicidology, imitation refers to the process where one suicide becomes a model for another. This imitation explains the contagious nature of self-harm, where one suicide can facilitate or “permit” another. Imitation can be direct, influenced by the suicide of someone close, or indirect, influenced by media portrayals of celebrity suicides.

The mechanism of suicide contagion is based on the idea that individuals shape their behavior through learning and observing models. Adolescence is characterized by a lack of firm personal beliefs and high emotional susceptibility, especially to tragic events. The contagious effect depends on the motivation to follow this behavior, knowledge of how to carry it out, observation of it, and the realization of the modeled behavior. The influence of suicidal behavior is particularly strong when there is excessive identification with the victim. Thus, through media information, teenagers acquire a ready-made behavioral model and a reduced inhibition against this behavior.

For more information, you can visit the World Health Organization website.