User:Keelseyr/sandbox

Suicide
The term suicide is used to describe when an individual ends their own life. Suicide is used as an escaped mechanism for people dealing with pain or emotional distress. In America nearly 1 in 12 teens have committed suicide in 2012. It is more apparent in female teens than male teens to have considered or attempt suicide especially in the early years of high school.

Reasons for Suicide
There are many varying factors as to why teenagers commit suicide, many people question why someone would chose suicide but the fact remains that it’s not about dying but rather the feeling to stop living. Teenagers face many hardships in today’s society and now more than ever are there even more reasons as to why teenagers commit suicide. Bullying is a common factor especially cyber bullying, depression also plays a huge role in most teenagers lives, and lastly past traumatic events that happened in the individuals life such as sexual or physical abuse.

Bullying
It is known that teenagers who are bullied are 2 to 9 times more likely to consider suicide due to the emotional toil it brings to them. With social media on the rise cyber bullying is becoming one of the most common forms of bullying with 17% of teenagers admitting to being victims of this affair. Majority of teenagers age 13-19 are online and around 80% of teenagers are using social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter, many teens experience cyber threats online, or received offensive messages. Although bullying is not the sole reason as to why a person would commit suicide it plays a huge part. When a person is bullied it can make the person feel isolated from everyone, worthless, and eventually lead into depression.

Depression
A major factor of suicide is depression, the thought of existence becomes too much to bear for the individual due to negative thoughts and severe low self-esteem. Between 15-30% of adolescence who commit suicide suffer from depression. Being depressed doesn’t include mood swings or the occasional bad day, depression for teenagers can result in a number of things such as alcohol and drug abuse, self-harm, and suicide. There are many signs to look for in teens who could be experiencing depression. Typically teenagers experiencing depression often feel hopeless, frequently upset, withdrawal from members of the family and friends, and loss of interest in activities they were once passionate about.

Signs Someone is Suicidal
Reasons for suicide tend to vary however, there are common warning signs amongst teen that should be watched out for. Typically warning signs for suicide are physical, emotional and behavioral. Physical signs can include sudden weight changes or if the person is consistently complaining about unexplainable illnesses or pain. Usually the biggest indicators of suicide is sudden changes in the persons emotional behavior, these changes can include drastic change in personality. In this case the person can go from being an outgoing individual to withdrawn. Other changes include a sense of feeling hopeless and feeling worthless. One of the biggest signs of emotional change can be depression, many teens today are suffering from depression which leads them to commit suicide. Lastly, behavioral changes can occur such as changes in friendships, sexual promiscuity, suddenly turning to isolation and abusing drugs and alcohol.

Cases Relating to Teen Suicide
On September 9th 2013 a young Rebecca killed herself by jumping of a factory tower. She was only twelve years of age and was constantly being tormented by more than 10 girls at a time through the internet and also in person. The bullying and tormenting was constant and even began to escalate when Rebecca transferred to a different school then it wasn’t long after the month of torture she ended her life.

Audrie Pott a 15 year old girl ended her life on September 10 2012 after being sexually assaulted by two male classmates. After attending a school party Audrie’s Gatorade drink was laced with alcohol where she woke up to find her clothes missing and comments written all over her body. The two males took pictures of Audrie and broadcasted it all over the school. After months of being bullied Audrie committed suicide and the two boys were charged and spent a month in juvenile jail.

Bart Palosz a 15 year old boy living in Connecticut shot and killed himself on August 27th 2013. Bart and his family recently moved from Poland to the United States where Bart started to experience bullying. He was taunted and made fun of by his peers for being 6’3 and having a polish accent. On the night of August 27th he took his families locked up shot gun and ended his life.