Tragedy

My family has been in utter shock for days.  A friend of my daughter’s, a senior in high school with excellent grades and lots of friends, committed suicide.

This must be the ultimate parental nightmare.  Not only is your child dead, but she chose to end her life.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), suicide is the third-leading cause of death for 15- to 24-year-olds, surpassed only by accidents and homicide.

The American Academy of Pediatrics cited these factors as reasons that young adult suicide has risen:

It's easier to get the tools for suicide (Boys often use firearms to kill themselves; girls usually use pills);

the pressures of modern life are greater;

competition for good grades and college admission is stiff;

and there's more violence in the newspapers and on television.

 My daughter’s friend was a competitive ice skater and anorexic.  She was seeing a therapist and had been a patient at The Renfrew Center.  But while ice skating and anorexia are linked (two of my kids did competitive gymnastics, another sport with high numbers of anorexics) there is not usually a link between anorexia and suicide.  In anorexia, you are slowly killing yourself, but the sufferer doesn’t see that she is starving herself. Anorexia is ‘an endless cycle of restrictive eating often to a point close to starvation in order to feel a sense of control over the body. This cycle becomes an obsession and is similar to any type of drug or substance addiction.”

Some suicide markers were absent in this instance; the parents are together, they knew their daughter was troubled, and they were seeking help.  According to my daughter, “ice-skating moms are psycho” but she acknowledged that this girl’s mom was “really nice” and that she kept saying she should have been home to prevent it.  But you can’t watch your kids’ every move, and even the most vigilant of parents will miss things in their children’s lives.

I wish someone had gotten through to this girl. And I wish I knew what to say to my daughter.

This is an original post to NYC Mom's Blog.