Why are more and more children having suicidal thoughts? Excerpt from the book «Acute States. How psychiatrists treat our children »

– Younger and younger children are trying to kill themselves. The age is decreasing, the number of children thinking about it and trying to kill themselves is increasing – admits in the book “Acute Conditions. How psychiatrists treat our children », dr Izabela Łucka. Worse still, «we are at the forefront of European countries with the highest number of suicides among children and adolescents. Only Germany is higher ». What is happening to the children? Why are more and more of them feeling suicidal? How to save it all, change it? We present an excerpt from the mentioned book.

1. 134 percent the number of suicide attempts undertaken by children and adolescents in the 13-18 age group increased between 2013 and 2020 – according to Police data
2. However, according to specialists, the number of suicide attempts among young people in Poland is underestimated, and such attempts are made by ever younger people
3. The feeling of helplessness intensified the pandemic, the children were locked up with themselves for months, stresses the psychiatrist
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Excerpt from the book «Acute States. How psychiatrists treat our children »by Marta Szarejko.

Marta Szarejko: Which of the disorders have, in your opinion, intensified in recent years?

Izabela Łucka, MD, PhD, specialist in child and adolescent psychiatry: There are more auto-aggressive and aggressive behaviors. I believe that forms of self-harm, just like suicide attempts, are more dangerous at the moment.

What do you mean?

In the past, attempted suicide by hanging was rare.

Today it is the most frequently used method among children over 14 years of age. What it comes from?

From the brutalization of life, less sensitivity. We react less frequently to vulgar content, violent language, inappropriate behavior.

We are at the forefront of European countries with the highest number of suicides among children and adolescents. Only Germany is higher.

We go back to the chaos in the two basic reference systems, there is no other answer. Every person, especially teenagers, has a lot of aggressive impulses. The key is learning to handle them, to deal with them without hurting yourself or others. But there are no adults teaching them this. So what is a child who is not taught to manage anger or frustration to do? I don’t know if you are – maybe so – a seasoned shooter …

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I do nothing else, just shoot and shoot.

It’s as if someone suddenly gave us a Kalashnikov and told us to shoot. So what would we do? Probably a massacre! Because we have no training, and this is a weapon. Likewise with strong emotions: anger is a powerful weapon and you need it to protect your limits. But you have to be able to manage it, operate it functionally, so that this energy does not self-harm, tear us apart from the inside, but allow us to fight for our own, but in a way that does not harm others.

It is interesting that you used an example with a Kalashnikov – in Poland children hang themselves most often, in the States they kill each other with firearms.

Because they have access to it.

Girls make attempts several times more often, boys more often commit suicide. More often in the countryside than in the city.

It used to be thought that boys killed themselves more often because they resorted to more radical measures. Now I don’t have the impression that the girls choose less radical ones. By the way: how many trials do we know about?

According to various studies, for every committed suicide, there are one hundred or two hundred attempts. In Poland, the number of suicide attempts among young people is very underestimated, and the “suicide attacks” registered by the police have recently reached the level of several hundred a year. While often in one psychiatric ward the number of attempts exceeds one hundred. Moreover, Poles die three times more often than other inhabitants of the European Union “for reasons that are not precisely defined or unknown”.

Exactly. And who is better emotionally connected with other people – girls or boys? And who has more permission to be depressed or cry? Children are not taught to regulate their emotions, they cannot, so they use whatever they come up with.

Self-damage.

For example.

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How do they relate to suicide attempts and suicides?

You have to ask yourself what is the pain function in general. The physiological function is that pain protects us, letting us know that there is something wrong with our body. For example, when the stomach hurts, we examine it. If it hadn’t hurt, we wouldn’t have known it was bad, we wouldn’t have been able to detect a serious disease. It is a kind of security mechanism that allows us to avoid factors that are potentially dangerous to us. When we feel pain, we can examine and heal ourselves, so the assumption is that we put the disease away. And endorphins, the feel-good hormones that are released when you cut yourself, are supposed to help you survive a difficult, threatening situation.

And now: a man who cannot cope with his emotions may at some point discover that in this helplessness, being hurt gives him a sense of control. And that he can supply himself with these endorphins, thus calms down.

But if I want more endorphins, I have to hurt myself more often or more.

I need more and I increase the risk of hurting myself irreparably. If I want to gain control, I can lose it completely and die. Therefore, people who mutilate themselves more often attempt suicide, even though starting self-harm is not always with the intention of suicide. It may or may not be. Sometimes, paradoxically, the intention is this: I have such strong thoughts of suicide that I will mutilate myself so as not to kill myself.

Further part below the video.

People who self-harm have a suicide rate 400 times higher than the general population.

Because this self-preservation instinct is already broken, they are already on the brink. But again: I think there is a great need to look deeper and ask a question, not to blame anyone, but to understand: why is this person not able to functionally talk about what he is experiencing? What causes self-mutilation? What harm has he experienced because his mouth is closed or he is not able to recognize what is happening in him and to experience it? Well, because you can see that he is in disagreement. You can see that he is suffering. The question is what is the reason and therefore: what system it is from.

This is something doctors in children’s hospitals observe very often today: great loneliness, suffering and helplessness. Because the fact that a child cripples himself is his idea for getting out of helplessness.

Which mental disorders and diseases are most often associated with thoughts and attempts at suicide?

With depression. With all violent and traumatic disorders. With anxiety disorders. With schizophrenia, with bipolar disorder. But also with a depressive experience of a certain situation: the death of a loved one, parting with a girl, with a boyfriend.

One psychologist recently told me that during a pandemic she had a rash of boys who couldn’t cope when a girlfriend dumped them.

The question is why this relationship that broke up was so unique, one and special. It’s a bit as if this teenager didn’t have another relationship before, such as with his mother and father. And yet he went to kindergarten, school, parents returned to work, so there had to be some break-ups before that. We return to adults and their maturity again, the awareness of creating a matrix of all future relationships of our child.

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Terrifying that they have such power.

The Lady says “authority”, I say “responsibility”. Actually, I am thinking of the golden mean between the two, that is, between “I have the power, I do what I want, because I can do anything” and “I am not an agent, tell me, child, what you want”. Because these are the extremes that create chaos in the child, and rightly so. You cannot develop healthily in any of the extreme systems – neither with parents who have a sense of total power, nor with those who abdicate and treat the child as a partner.

But! Various disabilities are also important in the context of suicidal thoughts and attempts.

For example?

Accidents that lead to depression – let’s take young men, or rather boys, who jump overhead and suddenly from athletic, independent, full of strength people become people condemned to the mercy of others, requiring care. There is a high risk of suicide here.

Even more often they are somatic diseases, such as diabetes.

As?

The very diagnosis of a chronic disease often causes depression, followed by suicidal thoughts. Young people often do not accept the fact that they are ill, so their cooperation with doctors, physiotherapists and nutritionists is extremely difficult.

It’s the same with cancer.

Today, reactions to social ostracism, hate and bullying at school are also important. Kids make challenges, exclude a person from the group, record videos in intimate situations, and then upload them online. An important factor when it comes to a child’s decision to attempt suicide is the feeling that there is no way out, that in their opinion there is no other solution.

1. Year by year, there are more and more suicide attempts among young people, and the number of children and adolescents who self-harm is increasing. Why? [BOOK FRAGMENT]

Younger and younger children have this feeling.

Younger and younger children are trying to kill themselves. The age is falling, the number of children thinking about it and trying to kill themselves is increasing. The feeling of helplessness was intensified by the pandemic – the children were locked up with themselves for months. Parents went to work or worked online in another room, lessons were remote – no one was prepared for such a school, neither parents nor teachers.

From the perspective of Warsaw, it is said that the Internet is everywhere, but it is not true. Children were often left alone, cut off, with the feeling that life was going on somewhere else.

Or they were locked in a house with an abusive parent.

The example of an eight-year-old, the youngest child to commit suicide last year, is often cited in the media. Does an eight-year-old know what he is doing when attempting suicide?

If he reaches for a radical measure, a method that could potentially kill him, he rather knows. The question is whether he realizes it’s irreversible. Very often children say: “First I will kill myself, then I will go to psychology” … Or: “First I will kill myself and then I will become a computer scientist”.

But this does not actually change the fact that, regardless of the age of the child, in such a situation we are missing adults. Because what does a child normally do when they have a problem? He is looking for an adult who seems bigger and stronger to him. Here, apparently, the child was in great desperation, he did not see anyone like that, even if there was a crowd of people in front of him. In his perspective, feeling, experiencing, no one was available enough to go to him and say: “I’m not doing well”.

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Parent depression is said to quadruple the risk of a child attempting suicide.

And what does a child experience in contact with a depressed adult? Is this adult emotionally available? What kind of relationship will a child develop with a depressed parent who has suicidal thoughts or even attempts? Many children who come to us saved their parents and called for help. Where is the place for a child’s emotions in such a situation?

Additionally, the child has an example that this is a way of solving problems.

I think you have to look at suicide as an act of aggression, not just self-harm. Especially if the parent does this to their children. Because is it a responsible parent? Does he reflect on what effect he has on the child? Please pay attention to how many troubles children result from the fact that we, adults, are fixed on ourselves, our needs, ours, and we are sorry, “I”.

This is the trend now: you have a baby, but focus on yourself, you are important too.

And this trend is absolutely right, as long as it does not absolve an adult from responsibility. Because a really happy mother is a happy child, just like a happy and fulfilled father, but his fulfillment cannot be at the expense of the child’s needs.

This is not added anymore.

And it should! Because the child did not choose us, we took the steps that brought him into the world.

Do you have any idea how to save it all, change it?

Start with prevention, not treatment. Teach people when the most important period in shaping the personality of a little person begins. And it starts very early: first there must be acceptance that I am fertile, that I am a woman, that I can give birth, that I am pregnant. Then the perinatal, pre-natal and early childhood periods are important. Until the age of three, the foundations of our personality, and therefore also of our relationships, are formed. This is a matrix, our equipment for life. If it had been said …

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Already at school.

All in all, we have space: education for family life, pre-marriage studies.

Clearly.

But you could! You could talk about it there. Not in a context of coercion, but of knowing that people understand why it is important. And what does it mean to have children. This must be taught.

Besides, teaching students of pedagogy, psychology and medicine. Is this topic important there? If so, how is it recognized? And the rest of the system, i.e. courts, social assistance, probation officers. Everything is connected, the integration of these sectors is essential. Saying there are too few child psychiatrists won’t help. Because what will the psychiatrist himself do? There is a shortage of psychologists, therapists, educators, and community nurses. In addition, the last cell: hospitals – are so disgusted and marked by the media that you really wonder what else you are doing here. And then there is nothing, the wall, there is already death.

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