It’s a parent’s worst nightmare: that their child becomes another statistic in the growing number of teenage suicides. Unfortunately, it’s not an unreasonable fear. In a study presented at the 2017 Pediatric Academic Societies meeting, researchers looked at statistics from 32 hospitals between 2008 and 2015. They found there has been a significant increase in the number of children between the ages of 5 (yes, 5) and 17 years old admitted because they were suicidal, or had harmed themselves.
What is happening to our children? The rise in psychiatric disorders, and children taking medications to treat them is frightening. According to the CDC there has been a 400% increase since the 1980s in children between the ages 12 and 19 using anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications, and the last decade as seen a 119% increase in adolescent eating disorders. It’s a trend that I’ve seen reflected in my own practice as a psychoanalyst and parent guidance expert.
We do know there are some risk factors for children and mental illness and suicide, including family history, family violence, abuse, children who have been bullied or are LGTBQ. But that alone isn’t enough to explain the disturbing statistics. There are clearly kids who need help who aren’t getting it because we don’t recognize that they are suffering, and they are suffering because they don’t have the emotional resilience to cope with challenges or setbacks in everyday life.
Research tells us there are two critical windows of brain and emotional development for children. These periods impact a child’s ability to feel emotionally secure, form healthy intimate relationships, and to handle stress and adversity. The first three years of life is the most important; by the age of three, 85% of a child’s right brain, which is responsible for social/emotional health, has been formed. This is when a mother and father’s mindful emotional and physical presence is key. They provide an external source of security and emotional regulation that the child will internalize and rely on as an adult. A child who lacks the protection and support of his parents is at greater risk for emotional illness. Children who have not had nurturing caregivers often show signs of ADHD, inappropriate aggression, behavioral problems, or social disorders, which are often reactions to fear, anxiety, and feelings of isolation.
The second window is adolescence, when the brain is growing and rewiring itself, as it does when a child is a toddler. If an adolescent does not have secure emotional foundation, or feels disconnected from her parents, she is less like to weather the hormonal and social storms of the teenage years. I say it’s like the story of the Three Little Pigs: the insecure houses of straw and twigs are easily blown away, but the house made of brick stands strong.
We expect too much from our children too soon. We expect them to be self-reliant when they’re babies, when they need us most. We don’t want them to experience failure as children and then expect them to develop coping skills as young adults. We bury ourselves in our technology and let them get lost in theirs, and are surprised when they shut us out. We lose patience with them when they’re anxious, or scared about the future. We expect our children to be independent, high achieving, and resilient to stress, without thinking about what we need to do to make that happen. We want our children to be more than fine, but we don’t want to listen to what they have to say when we’re not.
In fact many of our children are not fine. They need the adults in their life to be there, and ready to listen when they are ready to talk. That’s not necessarily going to happen on a schedule that’s convenient for us. As adults it’s on us to be observant, willing to do the hard work of being open refrain from judgment. We need to be able to ask uncomfortable questions when our children may not be open to us and reach out when they feel cut off.
When children suffer, parents suffer. And when a generation of children suffers, society suffers. The question is, are we willing to do what needs to be done to make things better?
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Erica Komisar is a psychotherapist, parent coach, and author of Being There: Why Prioritizing Motherhood In The First Three Years Matters
