Suicide Among Youth Within Residential Group Facilities and Single Family Foster Homes

Suicide Among Youth Within Residential Group Facilities and Single Family Foster Homes

Recent years, researchers admit high rates of suicides among youth within the foster care system. Researchers explain that suicides are caused by social and emotional conditions rather than a mental disease. Furthermore, it is often associated with hundreds of suicides and suicide attempts. “Researchers discovered attention problems and aggressive or delinquent behavior in 40 per cent of children aged five to 17 who were in home-based foster care, up to eight times more than in the general school-age population” (Gough 2007). Though the statistics vary extensively, it is generally believed that some 18 percent of patients with psychological problems finally do kill themselves, and illnesses may be associated with approximately 50 percent of all suicides (Youth Suicide Fact Sheet 2009). The data show, that miserable youth teenagers do not always kill themselves. Symptoms of psychological distress serve as a strong warning signal. They are a good indicator that someone is a potential suicide, especially if he or she has tried suicide before, and it is important to know about psychological distress if researchers are to understand suicidal behavior.

The book Children in Foster Care by J.G., Barber and P. H. Delfabbro provides a wide-ranging description of foster care environment and singles out possible causes of suicides. Researchers know that distressed teenagers, young and old, simply do not feel good about themselves. In foster care homes, they feel helpless, unable to lift themselves out of whatever it is that pull them down, be it the death of a friend, the stress of a work or schoolwork, or opportunities lost. Distressed teenagers may also be plagued with a sense of despair, a feeling that they’ve run out of luck, that no matter what these teens do it will turn out badly. Finally, despair sets in, that dreadful feeling that no decisions whatsoever exist. Fascinated in such a research of futility, and convinced that no one cares or can help, some deeply depressed teenagers understandably, very much, choose the one quick way of putting an end to all the misery, suicide. The researchers who work with teenagers in a community center describe the role that despair plays in a youthful suicide. Just a glance at the suicide notes teenagers often leave, or the poems and diary entries they write before taking their lives, tells us how painful, all-encompassing, and overwhelming despair is in those who kill themselves.

The research study provided by J. Ciffone (2007) Suicide Prevention describes the major causes of suicides among young teenagers in residential group facilities and possible ways of prevention. They are often only precipitating reasons, contributing issues, things that pushed susceptible teenagers over the edge. In examining why teenagers become depressed and why teenagers kill themselves, researchers cannot look for simple research. “The roots of psychological distress lie buried deep, and so, too, do the roots of desperate behavior/” (Ciffone 2007, p. 43). This does not mean that researchers can ignore the outside forces that at times crowd a person beyond his or her ability to cope. Nor can researchers ignore what goes on in our psyches — the mental or psychological structure that makes us what researchers are and forces us to behave in certain ways. hurtful life events, poverty, alienation, lack of a solid tie to guardians, pressure from a guardian on a teenager for that teenager to be more than he or she can or wants to be, and the enormous gaps between what a teenager wants and what he or she actually is or becomes — all of these things may be closely connected with psychological distress and with suicide. Consider an young man — and the elderly are especially prone to suicide who has come down physically but not psychologically. The guardians in single families in foster care tries to find work, but in a society that favors youth and energy — not to mention companies’ delight in being able to pay a younger person less because he or she lacks experience and is eager to learn — he is unable to do so. The man becomes more and more aware of his age and of the limited number of months he has left, and he becomes very depressed.

The research The First Four Months in a New Foster Placement by J.G., Barber and P. H. Delfabbro (2003) describes problems and factors of high suicide rates among youth in residential group facilities. The same pattern can affect a much younger individual who faces a traumatic life change, or whose goals are thwarted. For some teenagers, a decision by guardians to move the entire family far away from the friends because of a new work can trigger a depressive episode. Some psychiatrists see psychological distress of that sort and the kind that affected the older man as situational troubles, or problems in living. Some of the psychological distress may be short-lived and gentle, others may last a long time and interfere with a person’s daily, normal activities. Once more, be aware that not everybody who kills himself is depressed, and that many teenagers who are depressed do not take their lives. In the next few pages, some of the deeper origins of psychological distress, and how these may be related to suicide, will be examined.

In contrast to previous studies, Browne (2002) states that children in single family foster homes are more apt to commit suicides because of emotional and financial reasons. Because emotional upsets like psychological distress often appear abruptly, and sometimes disappear just as quickly and because they frequently appear in several members of a family, most researchers today believe that intelligence is responsible, and that those imbalances are almost certainly inherited. Supporters of this view hold that if a person has such a chemical makeup, the ordinary hurtful life events that make many of us mildly depressed can perhaps touch off a major clinical psychological distress. “Severely depressed teenagers who attempted suicide while they investigate participants in one study of psychological distress excreted radically increased amounts of this hormone in their urine just before they tried to kill themselves” (Browne 2002, p. 22). Then, half of another group of depressed teens in the study — all with suicidal signs — researchers found to have high levels in the amounts of hormone found in their blood; more important, three patients who succeeded in killing themselves, and two who nearly did so, had high levels of the hormone prior to suicide or attempted suicide.

The same findings researchers made by Ponte and Gillan (2005) who stated that single family foster care environment is dangerous for young teenagers as they feel helpless and insecure in such families. The social issues discussed in this study are a collection of the life and relationships of human beings in a society. “Although legal recognition of households would certainly drive benefits protection forward, it is unlikely to occur in the current divisive political climate” (Ponte and Gillan 2005, p. 43). Most of the time, that grouping is a winning one that makes for fairly happy and comfortable individuals, teenagers who work and dream of the future. But sometimes the mixture goes bad and an individual comes under the sway of the bad influences of society, influences that make life empty for many teenagers. Selfishness is the habit of valuing only the issues that are of interest to oneself; at times, it can be called selfishness. The selfish person may be someone who has few ties, to all of the issues that give us support and a sense of belonging and distribution — family, a club, a local organization, a church. Because such teenagers avoid contact with peers, they begin to depend a lot on themselves for gratification and support, and as a result they often grow very lonely and prone to suicide. The selfish individual, , does not always intentionally seek isolation. Many teenagers have isolation thrust upon them, and they are forced to fend for themselves.

Sinclair et al (2005) describes the problems of residential group facilities and possible difficulties faced by guidance’s. The researchers state that suicide is higher among single teenagers than among the married; it is high, too, among the divorced, the persons, and the elderly who live alone; among those who live in the isolation of apartment buildings, locked behind a door that looks the same as all the others on a corridor, in a faceless building that is identical to all the others on the street. In all these buildings the occupants rarely ever have more than an associate with the neighbors. Another example of how a selfish environment can contribute to suicide is found among young blacks who are driven to search for death. For years it was assumed that” suicidal actions was not common among blacks, that self-destruction was primarily a white phenomenon, a white person’s way of dealing with “white only” difficulties” (Sinclair et al 2005, p. 77).

History quite teems with instances of suicide that arose either from a deep and genuine individual choice to place oneself second, or because the public might have had certain strict set of laws that demanded such selfless behavior. There have been people who volunteered for a dangerous task that meant certain death for them. They believed that their task might win a battle and save many other lives. There are some people who research for deaths by taking the place of others who had been condemned to die. “A similar position occurs in the classic lifeboat scenario of fiction and real life, in which one of those cast adrift in an overloaded boat offers to slip into the water to lighten the load and, presumably, help the others survive” (Barber and Delfabbro 2003, p. 73). Many other community conditions may be responsible for suicide. Some of them may fit into three categories, others may be closely related or variations, and still others will seem to partly cover into the psychological factors. The researcher has suggested that alcoholism, unemployment, cutbacks in social services, and academic competition contribute to the many suicides that occur among youths that the ages of fifteen and twenty four by encouraging widespread psychological distress and loss of self-esteem. Guardians may be at fault, though accidentally. Under stress themselves, because of divorce or job loss, they often find themselves unable to help troubled children. They may be unaware or even embarrassed that their children are considering suicide. Perhaps they simply do not know where to get help.

Reser, J. P (2004) and Smith D. K. (2004) find that while abuse is often of a physical nature, there are other forms of abuse that society can inflict upon us. There are so many of these that it is difficult to categorize them, let alone list them. Consider, the sort of abuse that girls are sometimes subjected to in the workplace, male bigotry. This term refers to the notion among some men that, simply put, women aren’t as capable as men, and that they should be “kept in their place,” which usually means at home taking care of the children or, if they are working, in jobs that are either less important than a man’s or, if they are as important, that pay far wages. Happily, such primitive attitudes are beginning to disappear, but there are still numerous pockets of resistance. “Indigenous youth suicide prevention/life promotion programs and community initiatives across Australia as failures” (Reser 2004, p. 54). That kind of force results when society ignores a person. There is another kind of force, just the opposite, in fact. It can come from society and its members paying too much attention to teenagers. Probably the most notable model of that, insofar as suicide is concerned, has to do with the pressure of school. It is true that students have always been stressed; stress is to be expected from any attempt that makes demands, sets deadlines, and stipulates a goal that requires work to reach. But, times have changed, and the psychological problems stresses of the past are easier, for the most part, to deal with. Many years ago, many young people concentrated on education for its own sake; today, the emphasis is on occupation, quite often for positions in high-tech industry, a big business that is fiercely competitive and full of exciting tales of bright young electronics wizards who are millionaires before they reach the age of thirty. When a person does commit suicide, it is not always during a stressful exam period, as is popularly assumed.

Statistical results taken from Youth Suicide Fact Sheet (2009) allow to say that suicide rates in single families in foster care is higher because of lack of emotional support and financial problems faced by single guardians. As in the United States, the pressure to achieve comes from both community and guardians. That unique spirit, of course, influences guardians and children, and it is not difficult to see how from time to time the sense of urgency builds so high that a person cannot take it any longer. A young person may be distraught if he or she does not make it into a “good” school, and the decision to commit suicide may be, in the minds of some, the admirable way out, a way to wipe away the disgrace of failure. A youth may not get the right job after graduation, or may not be promoted fast enough; those issues, can cause distress serious enough to force some persons to kill themselves. The stress that is heaped upon young people in these countries generally stems from the extremely high expectations that guardians often have for their children. The reasons for the high potential are not clear, but it has been suggested. Sometimes, anxiety contributes to physical ailments, like illness, other times to such psychological problems as anorexia nervosa, a severe eating disorder characterized by self-starvation that can result in death. In considering the way social circumstances contribute to suicidal behavior, one cannot neglect a form of pressure — call it, rather, an influence — that has been talked about quite a bit these days. The influence goes by many: modeling, contagiousness, or suicide by fake. Young children may choose a method of killing themselves that leaves only a small opportunity for rescue. They may have gotten the thought of dying without realizing its full impact, from something as easy as a television cartoon that depicts a hero bounding back after a devastating fall.

In sum, the literature review shows that youth are usually aware of the finality of death. This is an imperative consideration, because there have been rashes of suicide in a number of societies over the past few years. They have even been called epidemics, and a growing number of researchers are trying to decide whether another social phenomenon — a contagious effect — has been driving teens to take their lives. Some researchers make generalizations without too much difficulty. Most researchers tend to agree that if there is such an experience as youth suicide, it almost certainly occurs in teenagers who have suicidal inclinations. Those who argue that suicide is infectious point out that relatives or close acquaintances of a suicide are at high risk of killing themselves, as are psychologically distressed people who are exposed to a suicide. They must be asked unemotionally and objectively if you are to get a better handle on why so many teenagers have killed themselves. It is tempting to look for simple research. For years, researchers have even been suggesting that the frequency of suicide changes with the days of the research and month. Issues like them are asked regularly by researchers and psychiatrists who are questioning the reasons behind suicides and suicide attempts. Idea about these questions may result in some precious insights that bear on the motives of teenagers who try to kill themselves or who succeed. Keep in mind, too, that what a suicidal teenager seems to be fleeing in life, what he relates as the difficulty, may be only part of the story. Thought needs to be given to suicidal teenagers’ attitudes toward life and wellbeing, their emotional state, their personalities, their families, and friends before a suicide attempt can be drawn.

References

Barber, J.G., Delfabbro, P. H. Children in Foster Care. Routledge, 2003.

Barber, J.G., Delfabbro, P. H. (2003). The First Four Months in a New Foster Placement: Psychosocial Adjustment, Parental Contact and Placement Disruption. Journal of Sociology & Social Researcherslfare 30 (1), 43.

Ciffone, J. (2007). Suicide Prevention: An Analysis and Replication of a Curriculum-Based High School Program. Social Work 52 (1), 43.

Gough, D. More pain for foster care kids. Retrieved 05 February 2009 from

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/more-pain-for-foster-care- kids/2007/02/24/1171734074121.html

Sinclair, J., Baker, C., Wilson, K., Foster Children: Where They Go and How They

Get on. Jessica Kingsley, 2005.

Browne, D. (2002). Coping Alone: Examining the Prospects of Adolescent Victims of

Child Abuse Placed in Foster Care. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 31 (1), 57.

Ponte, L. M., Gillan, J.L.(2005). From Our Family to Yours: Rethinking the

“Beneficial Family” and Marriage-Centric Corporate Benefit Programs. Columbia Journal of Gender and Law 14 (1), 43.

Reser, J. P. (2004). What Does It Mean to Say That Aboriginal Suicide Is Different?

Differing Cultures, Accounts and Idioms of Distress in the Context of Indigenous Youth Suicide. Australian Aboriginal Studies, 1(1), 54. .

Smith, D. K. (2004). Risk, Reinforcement Retention in Treatment, and Reoffending

for Boys and Girls in Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care. Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders, 12 (1), 38.

Youth Suicide Fact Sheet (2009). Retrieved 05 February 2009 from

http://www.safeyouth.org/scripts/facts/suicide.asp

http://methadonetreatmentfor.com/7549/suicide-among-youth-within-residential-group-facilities-and-single-family-foster-homes/