Suicide in the spotlight

 

A new Unicef report has found that Ireland has the fourth-highest teen suicide rate among the world’s high-income countries. Things are so bad, that the report grimly forecasts that one in 10,000 Irish kids between the ages of 15 and 19 will die by their own hand. I have two children who fall into that category; you may have a couple, and, indeed, virtually all of those children who will take their own lives before they reach 20 have parents who will be devastated by the loss.

 

So, what do we do? There is no single, failsafe suicide-prevention method, of course. Attempts to prevent teenage suicide are probably as varied as the reasons why children choose this route in the first place. There is one phenomenon of the spiralling youth suicide rate that I find deeply unsettling, however, and I fail to see how it can help anybody but the people whose profiles are being raised by it. I’m talking about the industry that certain celebrities have built around packaging their own moments of self-doubt as in some way comparable to the mental torture that forces some kids to conclude that the only way out of their pain, is to end their lives.

 

We are confronted with images of the kind of impossibly gorgeous young men and women that make insecure teenagers feel worse about themselves, and then we are expected to believe that those self-same models of perfection felt so bad about their luscious-tressed, lithe-bodied selves that they wondered would they make another album/film/appearance on the catwalk. Buoyed by exorbitant fees and indulgent presenters, they leverage their five seconds of self-doubt into books, speaking tours, and endless hours of TV and radio — all with the doe-eyed declaration that they hope they can help just one person out there who has felt the same way.

 

 

The thing is, precious few teenagers have felt the same way as these cossetted and self-absorbed stars cashing in on the crisis. Not many struggling boys and girls are battling the demons of too much fame and adulation, or trying to overcome the pain of being just too good looking. I don’t know how to stop people ending lives they have barely started, but I don’t think celebrities who name their demons do, either.

 

I don’t trust you; you are not a doctor. And I don’t think you should be making gains from other people’s pain.