Childhood Suicide and Myths Surrounding It

Sometimes, when I'm really upset, I say I'll shoot myself. When my brother gets on me, I feel like dying. An eight-year-old boy I think about dying a lot. I thought of hurting myself, cutting my wrists. I think about how it's going to be when I die. It keeps coming back. A 10-year-old boy The above excerpts are from an article in the New York Times (Brody, 1992). Cases such as these are not rare or unusual. Suicide among children ages five to 14 years occurs more frequently than one would suspect. In 1989 the National Center for Health Statistics placed suicide as the sixth leading cause of death in that age group (National Center for Health Statistics--Child Abuse and Suicide, 1979-1989); however, psychiatrists and health officials believe the ranking is closer to third at present. Accurate mortality ratings are difficult to ascertain because many suicides can, and do, pass for accidents. There has always been a stigma attached to the relatives and friends of a person who commits suicide. These relatives and friends frequently suffer a deep sense of guilt about the death, anger at the deceased, and feelings of shame that suicidal signals were ignored or that suicidal tendencies were exacerbated by the attitudes and behavior of those around the person. Some recent literature focuses on relieving stigma for the survivors (Bolton, 1983; Dunne, McIntosh, & Dunne-Maxim, 1987). There is a profusion of literature on the dynamics and causes of adult suicide. However, less information is available concerning the suicide of adolescents (15- to 22-year-olds), and a paucity of information exists pertaining to the suicide of 10-to 14-year-olds. Periodically over the last 100 years, childhood suicide has sparked some small interest among researchers. In 1885 Durand and Farland published an article on childhood suicide, and in 1910 the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society devoted an entire meeting to a publication entitled Suicide in Childhood (cited in Pfeffer, 1986). About a decade ago society began to view adolescent suicide from a realistic perspective. At that time the increase in adolescent suicide had cut across all demographic boundaries. In the United States suicide among adolescents had risen from the seventh to the second leading cause of death (Dismuke, 1988). Society was slowly beginning to accept the idea that young people were actually killing themselves. Medical doctors, psychiatrists, social workers, nurses, teachers, and even parents stopped hiding their heads in the sand in an effort to preserve their own fantasies that youth is the happiest time of one's life. Even more prevalent is society's denial of the possibility of suicide among preadolescents. Why is it so difficult to accept the fact that a child could resort to such destruction when there is clear evidence of other violent behaviors filtering down to eight- and nine-year-olds? Preadolescent suicide is glossed over in this society for at least two reasons: the desire of families to avoid stigma and the low number of suicides in that age group. Another contributing factor to society's inattention to childhood suicide is the existence of myths or misconceptions surrounding the suicide of children. This article seeks to dispel five such myths. 1. Children under the age of six do not commit suicide. This myth has been successfully disputed by physicians and psychiatrists. Examples have been given of five-, four-, and three-year-olds who were described as clearly suicidal. Even the case of a 10-month-old who revealed symptoms of not wanting to live has been presented. Children often regard themselves with the same hostility and criticism as their parents do, thereby forming a nucleus of a bad self-image (Rosenn, 1982). 2. Suicide in the latency years is extremely rare. This myth can be disproved by mortality rates alone. Suicide risk increases with the age of the child until it reaches a peak in adolescence; however, the increase is steady from eight to 14 years of age. …