Youth Suicide

Suicide claims a life approximately every forty seconds worldwide. Australia’s youth are not exempt, and are in fact particularly susceptible, with over 2000 adolescents successfully suiciding each year and more than 60 000 attempting it (Joiner 2005). This paper will attempt to discover why. What propels some young people into suicidal behaviour, and how are they resisting nature’s strongest instincts of self-preservation? As well as attempting to answer these questions, indicators of suicidal behaviour will be investigated along with possible future preventatives that carers can use to counter self-destructive behaviour in students.

The most basic of human instincts is self-preservation. It is ironic then, that suicide has often been seen as a weak, easy way out. Voltaire once said “It seems rather absurd that Cato slew himself through weakness. None but a strong man can surmount the most powerful instinct of nature.” (Joiner 2005) Voltaire recognised that to commit suicide is an order against all human instinct and is incredibly difficult to completely carry out. The suicide statistics mentioned in the introduction may have illustrated this point already; generally with every one successful suicide there are thirty attempts. It is important to note, however, that the number of unsuccessful attempts drops as age increases, and older adolescents become much more successful than those younger (Wolfe 2006). To understand why so many younger adolescents are ‘unsuccessful’, it is important to make distinctions between the successful and the unsuccessful. Schopenhauer and Joiner argue that few people want to die, and even fewer can. Certain ingredients are needed, Joiner believes, for an individual to carry out and complete suicide, and that these ingredients are often rarely possessed by younger adolescents (Joiner 2005). Most attempts are unsuccessful due to lack of experience and the strength of the obstacle of instinct Voltaire pointed out: self-preservation.

Self-injury is extremely painful and fear-inducing. Those able to withstand the act of suicide, Thomas Joiner argues, are those who have accumulated the experience, exposure and practice of pain and violence (intentionally or unintentionally) through self-injury, self-injection of drugs, multiple surgeries, piercings and tattoos, or even extreme or reckless sports and activities (Joiner 2005). A study found that heroin users were fourteen times more likely to commit suicide (Darke & Ross 2002) and in groups of suicidal youths it was found more often than not that the successful suiciders had tattoos