What We Should Know About Child Suicide & Self-Harm

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The information in this post is distressing. At risk children and families need help dealing with trauma and mental health issues that our communities are either unaware of or unwilling or unable to provide. With the social and economic upheaval of the COVID pandemic, there is more stress and less help available to families and children unable to cope.

Only one out a hundred very young children are successful in their suicide attempts. Most child suicides are not by guns (the primary means of adult suicides), but by hanging and poison. Kendrea (6) and Gabriel (7) successfully hung themselves a few years ago. They came from different states but suffered the same afflictions.

Many child suicides are by children that have been traumatized by rape and torture in their birth homes and forced onto mind numbing Prozac like drugs in foster care (court orders). In America, about a third of foster children are forced onto these drugs. In 2014, Johnson & Johnson and other big pharma firms paid out billions of dollars in fines for illegally “selling those drugs to pediatricians for use on very young children”.

Kendrea Johnson lived close to me. Gabriel wrote very articulately about killing himself because he despised being forced onto Prozac like drugs. Kendrea’s suicide note was in crayon.

One of my CASA Guardian ad Litem case kids was tied to a bed, beaten, starved and raped (repeatedly over four years) after the court sent him to live with his biological father. The last time I remember crying (about 10 years ago) was when that boy told me about his plan to suicide by cop.

This boy had tried many times to kill himself as my case child. What’s it like to be that cop? What’s it like to be that teacher, social worker or guardian ad Litem?

Child suicide attempts, cutting and a dozen other forms of self-harm are almost never known outside of child protection.

With almost no public reporting or transparency, very few people ever know about how hard state ward children exhibit self-hate, practice self-harm and try to kill themselves.

Child abuse lasts forever – this suicide note explains it well.

The National Poison Data System, researchers found more than 1.6 million cases of 10- to 24-year-olds attempting to kill themselves by poisoning from 2000 to 2018. More than 70% of the suicide attempts by poisoning were in young women.

U.S. youth emergency psychiatric hospitalizations and suicide attempts are escalating at alarming rates.

Among children between the ages of 5 and 17, annual emergency department encounters for suicidal ideations and attempts have more than doubled from 2008 (0.66%) to 2015 (1.82%)7. That equates to an increase of 35,266 encounters for SI or SA during the period of 2008-11 to 80,590 encounters from 2012-2015.

One in four pre-teen suicides may be LGBTQ youth. Suicide is the second leading cause of death…

among young people 10-24.. These articles collected in June 2020 shed light on child suicide and self-harm;

Bleak UNICEF Report On Kids And COVID-19 … But There Is Hope

NPR

Especially concerning, say UNICEF and regional mental health experts, are anecdotal and statistical reports that show suicides and suicidal thoughts …

Do you know what UNICEF is telling us? – News Intervention (blog)

600m S Asian children threatened by COVID-19: UNICEF – United News of Bangladesh (press release)

Urgent action needed to safeguard futures of 600 million South Asian children threatened by … – UNICEF (press release)

What We Should Know About Child Suicide & Self-Harm

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Author: Mike Tikkanen