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.
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