The Causes of Suicide Among the Youth

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Running head: What Mainly Causes Adolescents to Commit Suicide? Ernst Guillaume California Baptist University SOC 123 Professor Thai, Yvonne Abstract: Adolescent suicide is one of major social problems that drastically ravaging the youth population. In the western societies it is the second leading cause of death of the young people. Researchers have found that the causes of that phenomenon are varied from societies to others, but mainly they have found that severe depression, stress, worthless, helpless, drug abuse, history of attempted suicide, and firearms are repeated as causes of adolescent suicide. However, it seems that the adolescents who happened to kill themselves are those with poor coping and solving problem skills. Keywords: coping skills, solving skills, depression, suicide, adolescents, interactions, pragmatic, firearms, death, and causes. Introduction and facts about adolescent suicide: Adolescent suicide exists everywhere in the world. But in the industrially western societies such as in U.S, Canada and in many European nations, adolescent suicide has been one of the major leading cause of death of adolescents since many years ago. It is estimated that “one million people die from suicide each year; this represents a mortality rate of 16 per 100,000, or one death every 40 seconds” (World Health Organization (WHO), 2002). Of this rate, “9.7 percent are adolescent suicide” (WHO). That same organization found in 2001 that for the year 2020, approximately 1.53 million people will die by suicide, and 10 to 20 times more people will be attempting suicide worldwide (WHO, 2001). This, according to that research, represents on average one death every 20 seconds, and one attempt every 1 to 2 seconds. This phenomenon was not like that at the beginning. It is by late 20th (1960s) century suicide started to severely ravage the young population.

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