Situational family factors beyond anyone's control can contribute to adolescent stress, depression, and suicide. For example, many teens who attempt suicide have lost a parent to death before reaching the age of twelve or had a parent become chronically ill during the child's early teen years. But there are family factors that are preventable. Nearly three-quarters of all suicide attempters come from unstable family situations characterized by divorce, separation, talk of divorce, fatherlessness, substance abuse, isolation, or lack of support. Answers, like the problems, are often complex.
Kids interpret lack of time or intimacy as rejection.
Most of the teenagers who attempt suicide claim they can remember no adult to whom they ever felt close. Some kids point to the lack of a loving father figure in the home. In many of these cases, the father has been physically present but emotionally detached and unwilling to interact or provide spiritual direction. In other cases one or both parents have been hypercritical. So now I shall dwell in my world where only escape will rest me here. . .