After the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School, experts at Columbia and Harvard University state that there was a spike in teenage suicides across the nation, simply because of the weeks of media coverage for the high school massacre. This inadvertently causes the young child to mature into an adolescent that accepts violence as a way to solve an issue. .
Sadly, devices that were meant to protect us, have switched roles to become tools of our own destruction. Handguns have played a huge role in the increase of teen suicides. In 1960, the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms reported that at least 90 million firearms were in circulation. Sounds pretty extreme right? It gets worse. In 2000, it was estimated that over 200 million guns were in circulation within the United States. With that amount of firepower, three out of four Americans could be armed if these weapons were evenly distributed. .
It is clear that more mothers work in today's society than they did in the 1960's and 1970's. When more women were leaving the comfort of the home to go to college and find a career, many believed this to be a sign of economic growth and a sign that discrimination of sexes was over. But what happens to the child that was used to having his mother caring for him all day? Many children are exposed to this isolation at too young an age, and by the time they reach their teens; they could have serious emotional problems caused by the void left by their working parents.
The rate of teen suicides saw its increase in the 1960's when divorce rates dramatically increased, when child abuse became the new way to punish misbehaving children, when television became the new opiate of the masses, when firearms floated around the nation like automobiles, and when parents made the difficult transition to the work place from the home.
It is clearly evident that teen suicides have dramatically increased since the 1960's, but what factors during teenage lives cause young teens to commit suicide? Suicides can be caused by thousands of reasons, but there are several main factors that can dangerously lead to an attempt at one's life or that can result in a successful suicide.
