Michelle Loubon

Has your teenag­er stopped vis­it­ing the mall fre­quent­ly, dress­ing up in fash­ion­able clothes or blast­ing mu­sic loud­ly? There's no need to pan­ic. But par­ents should be wary and look deep­er if with­draw­al from ac­tiv­i­ties he or she once en­joyed con­tin­ues un­abat­ed. The child could be head­ing for clin­i­cal de­pres­sion. Be­fore the sit­u­a­tion gets worse or ir­re­versible, par­ents should reach out to the child with re­spect and un­der­stand­ing. Show your un­con­di­tion­al love and of­fer emo­tion­al sup­port dur­ing the dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od of ado­les­cence. If you feel your teen might be con­tem­plat­ing sui­cide, it is im­por­tant to make them feel loved and want­ed.

Maybe, you can share a sto­ry of your per­son­al tri­umph amid ad­ver­si­ties. Let your teenag­er know it is pos­si­ble to over­come life's chal­lenges. Re­cent­ly, shock­waves swept through T&T when St Mary's stu­dent, George Kazan­jian, hanged him­self at his Nut­meg Av­enue, Hale­land Park, home. He nev­er said why he chose to ab­bre­vi­ate his life. Be­fore, Re­hana Nand­lal, 15, of Bar­rack­pore com­mit­ted sui­cide by drink­ing weed­i­cide. Her ap­par­ent lover, Hy­dar Mo­hammed did the same. The girl's sui­cide was big news sole­ly be­cause of her ap­par­ent sex­u­al re­la­tion­ship with the 52-year-old se­cu­ri­ty guard at her Bar­rack­pore school.

On June 23, 2005, Is­land Schol­ar Taan Ma­haraj, the son of promi­nent politi­cian Ralph Maraj com­mit­ted sui­cide by drink­ing paraquat. But be­neath the sur­face, lead­ing ex­perts have vol­un­teered the teenagers were prob­a­bly deal­ing with clin­i­cal de­pres­sion and the dif­fi­cult tran­si­to­ry pe­ri­od of ado­les­cence. Among the chief warn­ing signs they iden­ti­fied are be­ing with­drawn. With the ad­vent of tech­nol­o­gy like the In­ter­net, they found teenagers were in­creas­ing­ly turn­ing to it for con­so­la­tion.

In­ter­net more read­i­ly avail­able

Coun­selling psy­chol­o­gist/founder of a Coun­selling Cen­tre for Ado­les­cents in Arou­ca, An­na Maria Mo­ra says chil­dren are turn­ing to the In­ter­net to vent their frus­tra­tion be­cause it is "more read­i­ly avail­able." Mo­ra said: "We need to un­der­stand what are the dif­fi­cul­ties teenagers are go­ing through and why the In­ter­net ap­pears to be so at­trac­tive. It is be­cause they have an av­enue. It is not a hu­man be­ing. It is more read­i­ly avail­able to them than hu­man be­ings." Mo­ra added: "If an adult was un­avail­able, they would have to strug­gle on their own. When adults are un­avail­able, the In­ter­net is avail­able. Par­ents com­plain their chil­dren spend so much time on the In­ter­net."

She not­ed, if teenagers don't have re­spon­si­ble adults around to tell them to turn to their books, the In­ter­net of­ten presents an at­trac­tive al­ter­na­tive. The hu­man el­e­ment must nev­er be un­der es­ti­mat­ed. "If you have some­one to talk to, then you are deal­ing with some­body one on one. You don't have that on the In­ter­net....un­less it is Skype (a live chat)." Mo­ra said par­ents fail to re­alise "ado­les­cents are sex­u­al be­ings." She said: "Pu­ber­ty can be a dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od when teenagers are chang­ing from child­hood to young adult­hood. It is painful, con­fus­ing and dif­fi­cult. An iden­ti­ty cri­sis for teenagers steps in. Their whole bi­o­log­i­cal sys­tem goes in­to a dif­fer­ent mode. Girls men­stru­ate. Boys have "wet dreams."

Par­ents ig­nore their chil­dren's emerg­ing sex­u­al­i­ty and fo­cus on aca­d­e­mics. Mo­ra al­so agreed get­ting an ed­u­ca­tion is im­por­tant. Mo­ra added: "Up to this day, many par­ents do not han­dle their chil­dren's sex­u­al­i­ty. They do not un­der­stand chil­dren are sex­u­al be­ings. The mere fact they are go­ing through these changes will alien­ate them. No­body is ad­dress­ing that. They are all ex­pect­ing their chil­dren to get 'As' in school. The fo­cus is on aca­d­e­mics. The ex­pec­ta­tions are high."

Car­ing adults

Mo­ra feels the in­ter­ven­tion of car­ing adults would steady the chil­dren dur­ing pu­ber­ty. She said: "No one is deal­ing with the fact these chil­dren are be­com­ing young adults. Their bod­ies are chang­ing and re­belling against child­hood. As they are grow­ing, teenagers be­gin to de­vel­op a sense of their world. One of the char­ac­ter­is­tics is they are "op­po­si­tion­al." It is not so much re­bel­lion. They are telling peo­ple, I'm be­gin­ning to think for my­self." Mo­ra said she dis­cov­ered there was no dis­tinc­tion in so­cio-eco­nom­ic back­grounds af­fect­ing chil­dren and teenagers. The clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist said: "Chil­dren who live in West­moor­ings and those squat­ting on a hill­side have the same is­sues. It is a painful time both phys­i­cal­ly and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly."

SEA 'fail­ures' com­mit­ting sui­cide

Di­rec­tor of Na­tion­al Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Vidya Poorans­ingh (at­tached to the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment) says some young peo­ple may at­tempt to take their lives be­cause they suf­fer from clin­i­cal de­pres­sion. Among the more pop­u­lar meth­ods were hang­ing and drink­ing weed­i­cides. She said: "The av­er­age per­son would think some­thing ma­jor has to hap­pen be­fore some­one takes their life. But there are peo­ple who suf­fer from clin­i­cal de­pres­sion. De­pres­sion is anger turned in­ward." She said even young chil­dren were de­pressed.

"We found a cou­ple years ago, there were sui­cides af­ter the SEA ex­ams. Some chil­dren took their lives be­cause they did not pass for the schools they want­ed. We had a case of a med­ical doc­tor who took his life. He was well off but he was clin­i­cal­ly de­pressed." Among the fac­tors lead­ing to de­pres­sion are peer pres­sure, self-es­teem and ad­verse fam­i­ly re­la­tion­ships. She said: "An im­pend­ing rev­e­la­tion might have brought on some strong sense of fear, guilt, sep­a­ra­tion and loss. An In­ter­net re­la­tion­ship might have turned sour. A young per­son might not know how to han­dle the re­jec­tion." Al­though she deemed it un­sci­en­tif­ic, she said: "Peo­ple must have faith in God."

Teacher: What did I miss

A vet­er­an ed­u­ca­tor said a young man in his class com­mit­ted sui­cide and it took him months to get over it. The guilt smote his con­science. He said: "You ques­tion your­self, what did you miss. Did you miss the signs and sig­nals? When a child com­mits sui­cide, it has a dev­as­tat­ing ef­fect on teach­ers. I kept ask­ing my­self: "How come I did not pick it up. What was it about the child that I did not know about?"

He lament­ed there was a ter­ri­ble short­age of coun­sel­lors amid a lack of ad­e­quate sup­port sys­tems in pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools. He added: "Be­cause of the large num­bers of stu­dents, we don't get to know them all. That's where the lack of sup­port sys­tems comes in. We are not able to deal with some of those chil­dren in the man­ner we would like to. There is al­so the lack of eq­ui­ty in the sys­tem."

Warn­ing signs

Some of the signs that are fac­tors in­flu­enc­ing the de­ci­sion of a young per­son to de­lib­er­ate­ly end his or her own life are:

• De­pres­sion

• Feel­ings of hope­less­ness

• Anx­i­ety

• Feel­ings of be­ing trapped in a life one can't han­dle

• Di­vorce of par­ents

• Vi­o­lence in the home

• In­abil­i­ty to find suc­cess at school

• Feel­ings of worth­less­ness

• Re­jec­tion by friends or peers

• Sub­stance abuse

• Death of some­one close to the teenag­er

• The sui­cide of a friend or some­one he or she "knows" on­line

• Talks about death and/or sui­cide (maybe even with a jok­ing man­ner)

• Plans ways to kill him or her­self

• Ex­press­es wor­ries that no­body cares about him or her

• Has at­tempt­ed sui­cide in the past

• Dra­mat­ic changes in per­son­al­i­ty and be­hav­iour

• With­draws from in­ter­act­ing with friends and fam­i­ly

• Shows signs of de­pres­sion

• Shows signs of a sub­stance abuse prob­lem

• Be­gins to act reck­less­ly and en­gage in risk-tak­ing be­hav­iours

• Be­gins to give away sen­ti­men­tal pos­ses­sions

• Spends time on­line in­ter­act­ing with peo­ple who glam­ourise sui­cide and maybe even form sui­cide pacts