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Suicide Should Never Be Cast Aside

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Suicide is deliberately taking one’s own life, in the United States this continues to be a serious problem and is the third leading cause of death among adolescents. With rates of suicide among young people doubling over the past fifty years. Teenagers who experience a sudden trauma growing up can intensify negative feelings and for some teens suicide is the solution they turn to escape their stresses and problems. One of the myths of suicidal talk amongst adolescents is that it is often a ploy used to gain attention or help. Rather than dealing with these threats, they are often seen as a bluff and are dismissed. However, the threat of suicide should never be cast aside, it is crucial to respond to these threats to avoid a negative …show more content…

Although some of these situations are experienced at some point by most adolescents, there is research that suggests that these negative life stressors in addition to a psychiatric disorder can greatly contribute to suicide risk and behaviors. (Smischney et al, 2014) However, these are just a few of the many risk factors that can lead an adolescent to suicide.
Most of these risk factors can also be prevented if the correct actions are taken to reduce the chances of suicide. In one source Dr. Kaslow explains that along with risk factors, those that increase the possibility of suicide one should also look for protective factors, or things that can decrease the risk of suicide. As Dr. Kaslow states in her research, children who have a lot of risk factors and little protective factors are the ones to be concerned about. However, if the child has a fair number of risk factors but a larger number of protective factors there is no need to be overly concerned about the behavior however, one should still act to help the child to prevent that behavior from growing into something that could have detrimental consequences. Protective factors that can assuage the risk of engaging in suicidal behaviors include having hood problem solving abilities, young people that can find ways to resolve conflicts in a non-violent way, having strong connections with family friends and people in their community are less likely to harm themselves mostly because they feel

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