Teenage suicide

A report has just been published where it is suggested that 1/3 of all teenagers/adolescents have contemplated suicide If I cast my mind back to my own adolescent years I can not recall ever having come across anyone who had mentioned to me or was reported in the media of having thought about suicide. It was simply not on the agenda.
We all felt times when we were unhappy, a girlfriend who had told us she no longer cared would cause us to plunge into deep despondency but we recovered fairly quickly. Perhaps the main element in all this was that we were not so self focused,  we didn't have dreams beyond our status. We were not fed with the contrast of what we had and what others had, our friends and acquaintance were from our own background and not contaminated with the feed of visual media.

There has been, over the last decade an influential movement to inform young people, not only of their rights but of their importance. When I was an adolescent it was not a question of knowing our place, we were happy in that place, living out our youth doing things that young people do without the overweening pressure that adults carry. If we promulgate from primary school onwards the child's rights alongside the rights of an adult, if we educate them to see themselves as younger versions of an adult then we must not be surprised if they begin to behave like one, with all the attendant consequences.