Suicide Among Youth Within Residential Group Facilities and Single Family Foster Homes
conditions may be responsible for suicide. Some of them may fit into three categories, others may be closely related or variations, and still others will seem to partly cover into the psychological factors. The researcher has suggested that alcoholism, unemployment, cutbacks in social services, and academic competition contribute to the many suicides that occur among youths that the ages of fifteen and twenty four by encouraging widespread psychological distress and loss of self-esteem. Guardians may be at fault, though accidentally. Under stress themselves, because of divorce or job loss, they often find themselves unable to help troubled children. They may be unaware or even embarrassed that their children are considering suicide. Perhaps they simply do not know where to get help.
Reser, J. P (2004) and Smith D. K. (2004) find that while abuse is often of a physical nature, there are other forms of abuse that society can inflict upon us. There are so many of these that it is difficult to categorize them, let alone list them. Consider, the sort of abuse that girls are sometimes subjected to in the workplace, male bigotry. This term refers to the notion among some men that, simply put, women aren’t as capable as men, and that they should be “kept in their place,” which usually means at home taking care of the children or, if they are working, in jobs that are either less important than a man’s or, if they are as important, that pay far wages. Happily, such primitive attitudes are beginning to disappear, but there are still numerous pockets of resistance. “Indigenous youth suicide prevention/life promotion programs and community initiatives across Australia as failures” (Reser 2004, p. 54). That kind of force results when society ignores a person. There is another kind of force, just the opposite, in fact. It can come from society and its members paying too much attention to teenagers. Probably the most notable model of that, insofar as suicide is concerned, has to do with the pressure of school. It is true that students have always been stressed; stress is to be expected from any attempt that makes demands, sets deadlines, and stipulates a goal that requires work to reach. But, times have changed, and the psychological problems stresses of the past are easier, for the most part, to deal with. Many years ago, many young people concentrated on education for its own sake; today, the emphasis is on occupation, quite often for positions in high-tech industry, a big business that is fiercely competitive and full of exciting tales of bright young electronics wizards who are millionaires before they reach the age of thirty. When a person does commit suicide, it is not always during a stressful exam period, as is popularly assumed.
Statistical results taken from Youth Suicide Fact Sheet (2009) allow to say that suicide rates in single families in foster care is higher because of lack of emotional support and financial problems faced by single guardians. As in the United States, the pressure to achieve comes from both community and guardians. That unique spirit, of course, influences guardians and children, and it is not difficult to see how from time to time the sense of urgency builds so high that a person cannot take it any longer. A young person may be distraught if he or she does not make it into a “good” school, and the decision to commit suicide may be, in the minds of some, the admirable way out, a way to wipe away the disgrace of failure. A youth may not get the right job after graduation, or may not be promoted fast enough; those issues, can cause distress serious enough to force some persons to kill themselves. The stress that is heaped upon young people in these countries generally stems from the extremely high expectations that guardians often have for their children. The reasons for the high potential are not clear, but it has been suggested. Sometimes, anxiety contributes to physical ailments, like illness, other times to such psychological problems as anorexia nervosa, a severe eating disorder characterized by self-starvation that can result in death. In considering the way social circumstances contribute to suicidal behavior, one cannot neglect a form of pressure — call it, rather, an influence — that has been talked about quite a bit these days. The influence goes by many: modeling, contagiousness, or suicide by fake. Young children may choose a method of killing themselves that leaves only a small opportunity for rescue. They may have gotten the thought of dying without realizing its full impact, from something as easy as a television cartoon that depicts a hero bounding back after a devastating fall.
In sum, the literature review shows that youth are usually aware of the finality of death. This is an imperative consideration, because there have been rashes of suicide in a number of societies over the past few years. They have even