  
When Teenagers Turn to Violence by Dr. Bruce Narramore, Psychologist
"School Massacre" & "Day of Terror" screamed newspaper headlines reporting the carnage in Littleton, Colorado. It was
the day two armed teenagers killed 12 fellow students, a teacher & themselves & wounded 23 other students.
This
followed 6 other murderous school shootings in less than two years.
In the light of
such tragedies we can't help but ask, "What would cause a child or teenager to ruthlessly murder his schoolmates, teachers,
parents & others?"
The answers are
as different as the ones involved, but there are several common characteristics of those who commit these murderous acts.
1.
These are angry adolescents. Children & teenagers who kill have been living w/rage for years. Sometimes it's obvious but sometimes it isn’t. They've lived w/violent fantasies, books, television programs
& movies, but their outward behavior has shown few signs of their deep rage. Beneath their quiet exterior an angry emotional battle has long been raging. When they become old enough & strong enough to carry out their vengeful fantasies, they do it.
5.
Some acting-out teenagers are suffering from neurological
problems or attention deficit hyperactivity disorders. While such physiologically-based problems don't excuse hateful, destructive acts, their physical difficulties can help us understand why some teenagers act the way the do.
The combination of feeling negatively about themselves, being angry & being impulsive, increases the likelihood that they'll engage in various kinds of
antisocial activities.
6. Adolescents who turn to violence are also spiritually confused or lost. Most have no real relationship w/God at all. Lacking any spiritual purpose & direction, they attempt to create
meaning in life by building their own view of how the world should be.
They decide
who the bad people are. And who the good people are - the underdogs or inferior feeling people like themselves. And then they decide to even the score.
Suicide
is the 2nd leading cause of death among people between the ages of 14 to 25 in the US!
An estimated 276,000 teenagers
between the ages of 14 & 17 will try to kill themselves each year. About 5000 will succeed. (According to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention)
The following statistics were
taken from a recent survey (2003) of college & high school students by the CDC.
- 27% of high school students said they had "thought seriously" about killing themselves during the past year
- 8% said they had actually tried to kill themselves
- 10% of US college students admitted serious thoughts about suicide
- 7% had a suicide plan
More than 30,000 Americans
commit suicide each year & 5,000 of these people are teenagers. Although 1 of every 8 teenagers suffers w/depression, the diagnosis is often missed, as depressive symptoms are often mistaken for the typical 'ups & downs' of
teenage life.
Even in societies where suicide
is illegal or taboo, people still kill themselves.
Most suicides occur in the
home between 3 PM to midnight. There are 30 to 50 times as many attempted suicides as completed suicides. 4 times as many
males complete suicide than females, but female teens attempt suicide twice as frequently as male teenagers.
Statistics also show that
kids from high-income families kill themselves as often as those from poor or middle-class teens.
For every teenage suicide,
there are more than 100 unsuccessful attempts. ”Copycat” suicides spread the tragedy even further.
The behavioral patterns found
in the backgrounds of most suicide victims, stress, confusion, self-doubt, the pressure to succeed & financial uncertainty are normal emotions that many teens feel.
So it's often difficult to
predict who may be at risk.
People who talk about suicide
often commit suicide. All talk about suicide should be taken seriously. People often have opposing feelings about whether or not they want to die, so there's always hope that they can change their minds if they receive professional help.
Many who attempt suicide are
under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Be aware of this signal. Many attempts are impulsive acts; be aware of those systems.
Suicide attempts are frequently made
during periods of high-anxiety; if the stress is relieved, the attempter may change his or her mind. If you suspect a friend is contemplating suicide, take the initiative & just
ask the person, "Are you thinking about killing or harming yourself?" & "How are you going to kill yourself?"
This will often get them to talk about
it. Be straight w/them, get right to the subject. Tell an adult, a teacher, a guidance counselor, or their parents about your
concern for your friend's safety.
Some people who are suicidal are very good at hiding their emotional pain,
that's why it's okay to just come out & ask if you think someone is hurting on the inside. Very often those people are appearing cheerful & popular on the outside to mask their pain & suicidal thoughts on the inside.
Your concern & intervention may be all that's needed to get him or her to vent their feelings & change his or her mind. If someone exhibits self-destructive behavior, this is often a warning sign that he or she is seriously considering suicide, not just trying to get attention,
as it was once thought.
Remember, just because a suicidal person
may get professional help & overcome his suicidal feelings, this in itself doesn't mean those feelings will not return, especially when the person is confronted once again by the stress & the problems that caused him or her to consider suicide in the first place.
Often teens think they are immortal.
Remind anyone who is talking about killing themselves that suicide is very permanent & that you care if they're here w/you in this world.
The numbers are disturbing to adults & yet, they only partially convey the tragedy of teen & young adult suicide. Each & every victim leaves
behind a void in the hearts of their friends, their schools & an ongoing ache in the hearts of their families & loved
ones. I know, I am one of them.
Some Warning Signs
of Suicide
Some warning signs
of suicide are:
- inability to feel pleasure
- ending significant relationships or commitments (breaking up)
- sudden change in behavior or disruptive behavior
- promiscuity (being very sexually active)
- absence from school or work
- inability to carry out normal tasks of daily life
- inability to laugh
Some Types of Suicidal Behaviors
About 60% of teen
suicide deaths occur using a hand gun. Teen girls attempt suicide far more often than guys (about
9 times), but guys are about 4 times more likely to succeed.
Why is this different?
Male teens tend to use more deadly methods, like guns or hanging themselves. Girls most often attempt suicide by overdosing
w/medication or by some form of self-injury.
Suicide deaths can occur
from pills, medications & other harmful substances, especially if these substances are mixed.
Sometimes a depressed person plans an act of suicide in advance. (Often the planning of an act gives the person some feeling of control). Most often however, suicide attempts are “impulsive acts”.
These acts occur
during a time of feeling overwhelmingly upset. A situation like a breakup, an unintended pregnancy, the death of a sibling, a fight w/a parent or boyfriend or girlfriend,
being harmed by abuse or rape, or being victimized in any way can cause a young person to feel desperately upset.
“Coming out”
for homosexual teens can also lead to suicidal attempts if that person is no longer accepted by their family or friends.
In situations such
as these, teens may fear humiliation, rejection, social isolation, or another consequence they think they can’t handle. Suicide attempts occur under conditions like this because in desperation & confusion, some teens see no other way out.
Risk Factors For Teenage Suicide:
Previous Attempts
-- Teens who attempt suicide remain vulnerable for several years, especially for the first 3 months following an attempt. These people may become very clever about hiding
their true feelings. Keep in contact w/them.
Personal Failure -- High standards (the teen's or the parents') that aren't met, even after only one
setback, may set off a downward spiral ending in suicide.
Recent Loss -- Death of close friends or family, divorce, breakup w/a boyfriend or girlfriend may leave a teenager so lost & alone that suicide seems the only option.
Substance Abuse -- Some teens abuse drugs or alcohol to self-medicate overwhelming depression; a combination of depression, substance abuse & lowered impulse control can end in a suicide attempt. This is often a fatal combination.
Family Handguns -- A gun in the house may make it easy for a troubled teen to commit suicide; children of law-enforcement officers
have a much higher rate of suicide because of the accessibility of guns. If you think your son or friend is in danger of harming
himself, please have someone remove that gun from the home!
Family Violence -- Violence in the home teaches youths that the way to resolve conflict is thru violence.
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Is Self-Injury impulsive?
The question of the impulsivity of your self-injury is an important one. Self-injury acts that are impulsive are more difficult to control. On the other hand, self-injury acts that take more planning & premeditation are easier to manage or control. Therefore, you're more likely to be able to control self-injury behaviors that aren't impulsive.
The degree of impulsivity associated w/self-injury in general is difficult to determine. Researchers studying this phenomenon have presented contradictory results, sometimes
finding that self-injury relates to impulsivity & sometimes finding that it doesn't.
It appears that self-injury & impulsivity have a complex, variable, unpredictable relationship.
Sometimes it can vary depending
on the situation. In some situation you may feel the urge to hurt yourself but may find yourself in a situation where it wouldn’t be ‘safe’ to do so. So you may postpone your act of self-injury for later. This is planned. But also if you self injured at the time you felt the need to do so it might be considered impulsive.
The degree of impulsivity in self-injury is also partly dependent on the type of self-injury. Some types of self-injury, such as hitting, hair pulling, etc. don’t need any preparation & can be done sometimes without drawing attention.
You might not even be conscious
of hurting yourself. So because these types of self-injury don’t need preparation they tend to be more impulsive than other forms of self-injury, which tend to need more planning & premeditation.
Also, the rituals associated
w/self-injury suggest that this behavior requires more premeditation than researchers originally believed. And you may decide
not to hurt yourself if you’re not in the right environment or don’t have the right instrument. Therefore you may plan to hurt yourself at a later time.
Like many other coping mechanisms
self-injury occurs when a person needs it, so it may occur w/out forethought. If you feel the need to hurt yourself & there's nothing to stop you, you'll probably hurt yourself. And at times you may be in a situation where it isn’t ‘safe’ to hurt yourself (school, work, etc.), but you can’t control your self-injury impulses. Sometimes your need to cope is greater than your need for secrecy & privacy.
As you have seen there are
many factors that determine the role of impulsivity in self-injury. Therefore it isn't surprising to hear of the many contradictory results found in research. But what has been found is that
impulsivity is likely to vary depending on the person & the situation.
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Dieting Impulses Lead to Weight Loss Blind Alleys
Being overweight is usually
a particularly difficult problem to overcome, because its causes are typically complex. Known causes include the physical,
the biochemical, emotional difficulties & ingrained habit patterns.
The typical first impulse of those attempting to solve a weight problem is to start a diet, the newer the diet the
better. This almost never works permanently. While weight is usually able to be removed by dieting, it rarely stays off, because
its causes haven't been eliminated.
Instead of dieting, your most productive first impulse might be to examine your fitness. If your triathlon is a stroll
from the couch to the cupboard to the refrigerator & back, any diet you attempt that excludes exercise will probably fail.*
You probably skipped over
the earlier chapter on how to obtain a reasonable level of fitness. Can I convince you to go back and read it carefully?(see below, it's included for you!) It really isn't a physical
fitness regimen devised by your sadistic old high school gym coach. Please! I'm not talking hours & hours of drudgery
at a sweaty health club, rather a total of about 30 minutes a week. Please do read & understand the fitness section in Chapter 5. It is worth reading!
If the speed of your metabolism
rivals that of a slow lumbering elephant, then your shape will also likely resemble the elephant. You can change your metabolism
w/a moderate amount of exercise.
There is today wide agreement
among weight control experts that Covert Bailey expressed an important truth about the choice facing overweight people when he titled his book Fit Or Fat. Without the choice of a moderate level of fitness,
continued fatness is almost a sure thing for those who are overweight.
The emptiness in our lives today causes billions of our unwanted pounds. If I'm not giving or receiving enough emotional love, I'm likely to try to compensate for love-emptiness w/food-fullness.
Similarly, I'm likely to try
to compensate for lack of human touch or sex by trying to make myself feel better thru food intake. If love, sex or touch is missing from your life, what are your plans for changing the situation? Your excess weight will probably
be difficult to lose w/out enough love, sex & touch in your life.
Did you also skip over the
last chapter on allergies? Many food allergies aren't obvious. They stress our bodies w/out our awareness & we tend to become addicted to (i.e., wolf down frequently) precisely those foods to which we are allergic.
If you have unknown addictive food allergies, it's a significant possibility that no diet will work. Nor will any other means of losing weight work, other than removing
from your diet the foods to which you are allergic.
Discovering your own food
allergies could well produce significant weight loss for you w/essentially no ongoing effort other than to avoid foods to which you're allergic. Doesn't that sound heavenly?
You might want to read Appendix D to learn how this author lost weight & thigh-inches permanently in a very short time (days!). Lost weight & thigh-inches
might be a permanent part of your future too, if you discover & eliminate foods to which you have an addictive allergy.
So many of our
difficulties, particularly those w/losing weight, have strong deep roots in our childhoods. These unhealthy roots often take
many years to dig up & let go of.
Permanent weight
loss usually only comes AFTER much psychological growth & is usually one of the LAST psychological issues to be resolved.
Therefore, a
longterm CONSISTENT looking at one's psychological issues is important. Why not incorporate the below self help quotes as a useful part of YOUR longterm program to achieve permanent weight loss
without diet pills or other not-so-useful programs?
"Changing Our Food Preferences..... Millions of us have experienced the change from regular
milk to blue (nonfat) milk. Initially the blue variety tasted thin & watery & we missed the "right-tasting" regular
milk.
After a few weeks, however, it was the blue variety that tasted right; & the regular milk then seemed too thick, almost
like cream.
We prefer what we eat regularly.....
from Be Your Own Therapist
"Everything's in the mind. That's where it all starts. Knowing what you want is the first step
toward getting it....." Mae West
Comment:. The oft-heard caution "be careful what you wish for" is oft-disregarded my
most of us, with oft-unhappy results. Often we want things that either are wildly unlikely to manifest or will give us much
distress.
"I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be honorable, to be compassionate. It is, above all, to matter: to count, to stand for something, to have mad some difference that you lived at all....."
Leo C. Rosten
Comment: Except some lives, perhaps, are meant to be full of frivolity, irresponsibility,
dishonor, disease or early death. (Past life experiencers usually recall lives of all sorts.)
"One should respect public opinion insofar as it is necessary to avoid starvation & keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this
is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyrrany....." Bertrand Russell
Comment: I recommend always respecting public opinion but following it is another matter to which I think the above speaks accurately.
"The seven ages of man - spills,
drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills, wills..... " Richard Needham
Comment: Most
of us resist moving from stage to stage. Acceptance of LIFELONG CHANGE is the better choice.
to reference from above: Chapter Five: Fitness in Thirty
Minutes A Week?
I highly
recommend the book titled Total Fitness in 30 Minutes a Week by Laurence E. Morehouse Ph.D. & Leonard Gross.
Surely
you have noted that most books written about exercise are written for athletes or for those who want maximum health? "You
must exercise for the length of time specified to obtain maximum cardiovascular fitness" is a typical statement to be found
in such volumes.
But
who wants maximum cardiovascular fitness at such a cost? It takes much willpower to spend a total of 3 hours a week exercising.
Such is a typical amount of time suggested by many of these books. The vast majority of people attempting such a routine will
soon quit because it just takes too much discipline.
Instead, I suggest the program
devised by Dr. Morehouse, then professor of exercise physiology at UCLA & creator of the original exercise program for
USA space astronauts. His 1975 book outlines a program whose goal is a reasonable, not maximum, level of fitness.
Not surprisingly, Dr. Morehouse
was criticized by colleagues who felt maximum physical fitness or maximum cardiovascular fitness "should" be the goal.
However, what those colleagues
failed to realize was that those whom Dr. Morehouse was attempting to reach would usually fail any approach that was significantly more rigorous. Dr. Morehouse (Morehouse & Gross 1976,
17) instantly revealed the audience he was trying to reach w/his first words: "I hate to exercise."
His initial program provides for:
- stretching
- strengthening of muscle groups
- moderate aerobics -
all accomplished in 30 minutes a week* (10 minutes of exercise 3 times a week).
Those of you who follow the
latest trends in successful weight-loss will no doubt note that this program meets two requirements of successful weight-loss programs:
(1)aerobics
(2)muscle strengthening
Do look for this classic book
in your used bookstore & follow its recommendations. Reasonable fitnessis the best goal for most of us.
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