A recent New York Times survey found that 46 percent of teenagers know someone who has tried to kill themselves. While recent attention has been focused on young men who direct their anger outwards, young women are much more likely to turn it on themselves. Writer Katie O'Bryant recalls her agonizing passage through junior high school, and reflects on why the lure of suicide is so powerful at that age.
Female adolescents are far more likely than males to attempt suicide, though less likely to succeed.
I was 11 when I started, part of the first class of sixth graders to enter what had previously been an intermediate school for seventh and eighth graders. We were young, still babies. I remember being scared, but I was always scared at the beginning of the school year. I had always hated school. As it turned out, I learned two things in junior high.