It's sad but when I read about children who are 'precocious', I think either their parents are driving them too hard, or (because of the example of a 4th grade boy bringing a girl to a school event...) there's been some sexual / emotional abuse [1]. None of what is being described here is normal childhood behavior, which makes sense, since the family is not at all normal. Both parents are hotshot career-focused individuals. It begs the question if the kids ever had time to just be kids. As I've discovered over the years going from a 'work hard, play hard' youth to a more mellow adult, is that balance is the key, and most people today simply lack it, and these parents sure sound like it.
I mean... just reading about their life before the suicides already stressed me out.
EDIT: Also, the article spent very little time talking about the human impact of COVID lockdowns (it mentioned them, but did not dwell). Passages like this:
> I asked Angela if we could come by for a condolence call. She said yes, if we were vaccinated. Because vaccines were not yet available to children, she added, “Don’t bring George.” She paused, then explained, “It’s just—because of Agnes. She can’t get vaccinated yet, either. And she’s all I have left.” In the following weeks, Angela told her story over and over to any friend who asked, as though she could contain it through repetition. For Billy, even conversational boilerplate was a struggle.
Make me think the parents were a bit over the top with regards to covid lockdowns. Children not being able to see friends? Human companionship (physical presence) is a basic human need on par with food and water. No one's surprised when a child dies from lack of food. Lack of intimate friendship is the same.
EDIT 2:
> Trevor, the child of well-off, educated parents, had far better mental-health support than most American children, but was not saved by it
In my experience, it's better to come from a lower middle class family (so enough money to eat and have everything you need, but not too much), than to come from outright wealth. Money is not a solution to every problem, and too much money and luxury is the root cause of many mental illness.
[1] I wrote this comment before reading the article, but the article later goes on to talk about how we was abused. I don't want to say 'I told you so', but the signs were all there. It's interesting... the New Yorker doesn't even stop to question whether the rise in child suicide rates may be due to a rise in child sex abuse.
Just because a family doesn't want hundreds of acquaintances visiting their home does not imply that their children were unable to see their friends. Many families throughout the COVID era have adopted the stable cohort, where the people in that cohort freely intermix, but limit interactions and take precautions with outsiders.
> Both parents are hotshot career-focused individuals. It begs the question if the kids ever had time to just be kids.
Yeah I’m gonna doubt that. Not that dual career households don’t have their own difficulties but that’s nothing compared to the effects of poverty. The article mentions a huge effect size of being black. I would guess wealthy families have drastically lower rates of child suicide.
Honestly I just think we all think kids should have easier lives, but they are never going to get that idealized version, be it poverty, war, issues with the family, racism... the list goes on and on.
We can only try to do the best with the tools we have, but the candy-coated life we think kids should have I doubt ever really existed. Maybe in the nuclear family 1950s. If you were white, at least.
I would imagine there's a U shaped curve. If you have too little and can't feed yourself / meet basic needs, I imagine suicide is a problem. If you have too much and can't spend time with your kids because you're working too much (mom being a hot shot lawyer and dad being a hotshot financier is not a 'normal' situation), then I imagine it's also a problem.
Both money and family time are necessary for kids to thrive. If you have one and not the other, it's going to be a problem.
It’s not a “normal” situation but it’s going to be better than many. It may even be better than normal if normal is the median. All we hear about the parent’s work lives is
> Trevor’s mother, Angela Matthews, a driven intellectual-property lawyer in her early forties, studied ballet and still carries herself like a dancer. Her intelligence and the intensity of her character can make her intimidating, but she is also given to acts of tremendous kindness. Trevor’s father, Billy Matthews, who works in finance, is affable and athletic. They have a daughter, Agnes, three and a half years younger than Trevor; Billy also has two sons, Trey and Tristen, from a previous marriage.
To extrapolate from this that they are over consumed with work and failed to parent their child seems like an extreme and frankly offensive claim. The term “hot shot” is never used and even if it had been, says nothing about their availability as a parent. You can be a hot shot at your career and still be available.
The problem for this child is, unquestionably, that he was the victim of a sexual predator at a camp.
The prevalence of these super career oriented, damagingly absent parents is for sure much rarer than implied. And probably not even a strong predictor of being neglectful parents
Honestly wondering about the size of the effect of being black. It seems like a very particular data point to select. Strictly true for that 5-12 age group, but when expanded to everyone under 18, Black is the race with the lowest rate of suicides. White is 50% higher, American Indian is 200% higher, Asian/PI is slightly higher, according to CDC WISQARS.
Before blaming parents for a child's qualities, have a couple kids yourself. See how incredibly different they are in personality, in strengths and weaknesses, in resiliences and fragilities. Then, if your kids are normal and healthy, think about how lucky you are that your children aren't physically or mentally ill.
(1) I do have children, (2) your statements assume, without possibility of falsification, that such mental illness is not at all due to environmental factors. This unfalsifiable nature makes these statements religious in nature, so I'm not going to bother questioning or arguing with them.
> (2) your statements assume, without possibility of falsification, that such mental illness is not at all due to environmental factors
No, they quite obviously don't. I'm pointing out the difficulty of knowing what contributed to a child's death in the context of mental illness, which can be both genetic and environmental in origin, and is not always in a parent's ability to influence. You can have two perfectly nice parents raise a literal psychopath and no one knows why. Happens all the time.
The idea that you can ignore this and zero in on the parents based on the info in this article is completely contrary to our scientific understanding of child (and adult) psychology.
The abuse, on the other hand, is obviously an important contributor, as you said. No dispute there.
The article goes out of its way to avoid discussing the damage the pandemic and the lockdowns did to children. We will reap that mistake for a long time.
Exactly, I remember distinctly at age 16 thinking my life was going to be ruined because my parents wouldn't let me 'party' [1] during high school. Children have neither perspectitve nor sense, nor should they be expected to be. The truth is two years of little socialization and stimulation may be okay for mentally well adults, but it is criminal to impose that on children
[1] As in... my parents had a curfew and didn't let me drink..., so totally normal rules for a high schooler, but I felt that the world was ending and everything was so unfair.
It would be criminal to allow children to rampantly spread COVID too, even if they themselves were/are at low risk. Imagine the damage when a child brings home COVID and one of their parents ends up dying or even "just" disabled with long COVID. There's no simple answer here.
In the 20-44 age range, 1/500 - 1/1000 die. In 45-54 it's 1/100 - 1/200. And that's ignoring long-term complications from the disease. The numbers are a lot better now that vaccination is common, but how many people would roll that die if they don't need to?
Since we talk so much about personality choice and responsibly in the US: it's their decision to take that risk, not yours.
While the death rate was low, it was way, way, way higher than usual cause of death at this age.
Also think about it in another way: a disease which impairs 1 out of 5000 people is not considered "rare" by any health authorities. For people 20 to 40, the death rate of covid was between 1/500 and 1/1000.
And i have another point for more economically-minded people: people from age 0 to 25 cost money to society. People 25 to 55 are net positives, as they contribute much to the economy: they consume a lot, they build a lot, they have energy for associative tasks and for child rearing. They are perhaps the most productive members of society on an island. Then consider people 55+. They are less productive, on an island, but sometime they have so much experience that loosing one without warning can set a company or some research back a couple of year. Also, they consume a lot, so loosing a lot of this population suddenly would destroy any economy riding on internal consumption.
The last argument is probably why policymakers of countries not know to care much about their workers still reacted quite fast (maybe overreacted: i don't think so, but i understand pleople saying that).
It's not just their parents who are at risk from a COVID-infected child, but also grandparents, teachers, and the parents and grandparents of other children who this child might infect.
They are a public health menace, and should be quarantined until they are no longer infectious.
It explicitly mentions it several times.. did we read the same article?
> Although it is too early to quantify fully the long-term impact of the pandemic, it has exacerbated the burgeoning crisis. The C.D.C. found that in 2020 mental-health-related visits to hospital emergency departments by people between the ages of twelve and twenty-seven were a third higher than in 2019. The C.D.C. also reported that, during the first seven months of lockdown, U.S. hospitals experienced a twenty-four-per-cent increase in mental-health-related emergency visits for children aged five to eleven, and a thirty-one-per-cent increase for those aged twelve to seventeen. Among the general population, suicides declined, but this change masks a slight increase among younger people and a spike among the country’s Black, Latinx, and Native American populations. Last October, the American Academy of Pediatrics declared that the pandemic had accelerated the worrying trends in child and adolescent mental health, resulting in what it described as a “national emergency.”
Focusing on covid would have completely misdirected from the important point that this trend has been in place for decades. I know the comments section is everyone's chance to project their personal covid grievance on whatever they're reading. But if you truly take this issue seriously you should be interested in its actual causes, which clearly predate covid. If you'd rather weaponize the cause in service of partisan nudging of the line on public health policy back and forth around the middle, go ahead I guess.
It would have been intellectually dishonest because actual youth suicides were not up in 2020 compared to 2019, were down considerably from 2018, and among the focus of this article, urban youth in New York, were in fact way way down, by over 50%.
Personally I would have chosen to focus on the nihilism of consumer materialism, starting with this poor child's list of empty "goals".
Oddly, the article doesn't mention anything about gender roles or the disproportionate impact of suicide on young boys, even though they commit suicide at 4x the rate of young girls[0]. This is especially odd because the author of the article does feel comfortable discussing other demographic trends, like elevated rates among LGBT and non-white youth, even though those trends are much smaller in magnitude than that of boys compared to girls.
"No one gives a shit about young boys" is not a fact. That's flamewar rhetoric.
I realize that you're expressing a feeling there and I'm sure the feeling is a good and well-intentioned one, but the problem is that inflammatory rhetoric like that, on the internet, just runs into other people's intense feelings and blows up. Then we get a dumb and nasty thread instead of a thoughtful curious one.
There are much better ways to express your concerns that don't break the HN guidelines. I'm just asking you to use one of those ways, instead of this way.
There's an aggressive societal push towards taking an apathetic stance towards the mental health among boys. White boys from poorer communities seem the most egregiously affected by this but they are hardly the only ones.
Certain groups who feel that there is a zero sum game when it comes to empathy seem especially threatened by the notion that we pay any attention to this issue and aggressivly push back against any attempts to talk about it out of some sense of moral superiority.
when I saw those idiots with the tikki torches, what I saw was insecurity by people withheld from any sense of meaningful identity. So much so that they revert to the ridiculous notion of being proud of their skin color because they have little else to go on. This root of the issue hasn't been addressed at all and by continuing to shame boys for being boys and creating an outlet for positive masculinity, we are leading society towards a very dark path.
I can't picture the specific phenomenon you're referring to, even abstractly, when you say things like "an aggressive societal push towards taking an apathetic stance towards the mental health among boys" and "Certain groups ... seem especially threatened by the notion that we pay any attention to this issue and aggressivly push back", and use the tiki-torch demonstrators as an example. It sounds like you're talking about the unrest and hate surrounding social politics, but are inserting male children who kill themselves in the place where the alt-right (or related terms) would normally appear.
The sarcastic "happy?" is maybe an indicator that this is not laid out in exactly the least emotional way, which is maybe part of the problem of clarity - do you have anything more specific in mind when you refer to this seemingly crazy movement against the very idea of helping suicidal young boys? That's a very broad, seemingly non-political thing to be "against".
> The sarcastic "happy?" is maybe an indicator that this is not laid out in exactly the least emotional way, which is maybe part of the problem of clarity
You're right. having grown up in massachusetts, and having spent a good amount of time in califonia, I've grown a somewhat kneejerk reaction to liberal hypocracy. Don't get my wrong, I have no love for republican policies but Ive also developed a strong distaste for how certain liberal ideologies even with reasonably sound ideas at their core, percolate to the more fringe leaves of the masses.
case in point, the notion of white privilege.
Root idea:
historical exploitation (to put it mildly) has created a system of inequality that exists to this day and largely privileges certain groups of people while disadvantaging others. We need to understand where we are in that place so that we can take steps to dismantle those institutions and create more equitable opportunities for people.
What well meaning idiots end up spouting at the edge (and yes I've heard such things come out of white people's mouths):
white people are all racist and toxic and should be sorry for existing.
And a more direct comparison, take the notion of toxic masculinity:
root idea: Societal expectations of boys are rooted in an imperative for boys to be behave in ways that are maladaptive. certain traits we define as masculine such as aggression, can result in behaviors that are deplorable. Its imperative for a healthy society to create a definition of masculinity thats rooted healthy positive behaviors and to accept traits that we associate with femininity as well in order for an individual to be emotionally "whole." Part of this means redefining roles for men taht embrace the good qualities of masculinity (healthy competitiveness, jovial pride, brotherhood and a modicum of stoicism) while avoiding the negative traits, (entitlement, tribalism, blaming others for ones failiures)
* What well meaning zealots end up spouting at the edge
"kill all men." "toxic masculinity bad mmkay" "I drink male tears"
Now to answer your question about why I bring up far right to a story about suicide. Its all connected. People express mental anguish differently. Some of the kids going though difficulty right now will get through it and find their way to a healthy adulthood. Some people, seeking an outlet to justify their feelings will join groups promoting maladaptive behavior in a desperate bid to feel part of an in group. This is where I make the connection to the tiki torch groups. Others sadly take the quick path out the metaphorical door.
Now you might ask, Why do I care so much about what fanatics at the edge think? Its because they are the straw man talking heads like tucker carlson push when trying to make their own regressive agenda seem like the sane choice. Its ultimately counterproductive towards the very ideals we should be working towards as a society.
anyways, props to you if you get this far down. Hope it clarifies my point
I see - I did figure you were implying some version of the sentiment that the backlash to the sins of our culture can make white people feel attacked for being white, and young people are especially susceptible to such identity-related negativity that arises from social politics bullshit. It was just hard to form a thought about it without details. Without getting into specifics, I certainly agree that it's a big and real problem. I know how you feel, if not specifically, than at least qualitatively. It makes my blood boil that some people try to erode sympathy for others based on their membership in some broad category, and anti-white and anti-male rhetoric are absolutely a significant part of that genre at present.
I think you are making some common missteps though. What I'm about to say sounds like whataboutism, but it's complementary: I have heard the words "I can't wait to kill liberals" (in reference to hypothetical civil violence after Jan 6th) come out of conservatives' mouths (for lack of a more specific word than "conservative"). This attitude is more commonly expressed not as an explicit desire for violence, but as simple hatred (and, relevantly, a mockery of suicide in specific), and, again sticking to personal experience only, has contributed to fear and depression in a couple young people I know. I try not to hold that against conservative ideology. More specifically, what I try not to do is make ominous, sarcastic, or broadly negative implications, nor lament the inconsistency of conservatives as a monolithic group as "conservative hypocrisy".
I know, analogies are bad - I am not saying that the problem you're describing is just a liberals vs conservatives thing, nor that there is an equivalent problem with the roles altered or reversed, nor that, even if there were, that we should always bring up one when talking about the other. What I am saying is that it's very tempting to look at extremely broad, immoral generalizations being made by somebody, and use them as an excuse to make our own opposite, lesser generalizations: "nobody gives a shit about young boys", "aggressive societal push ...", "there is a war on white people" (the last one not from you, obviously, but a related example).
I'm obviously sympathetic to your concerns, but particularly when it comes to pointing out things that don't mesh with the mainstream narrative, it's most effective to state the facts and let them speak for themselves. That's enough to get people interested in the truth to draw their own conclusions.
It's also odd that somehow the fact that boys commit suicide at four times the rate of girls can be used as a soapbox to try to prove that girls are more troubled growing up.
But the point here is that the article omits this critical fact, even though being male identified is overwhelmingly the strongest demographic factor indicating risk of suicide. Doesn't that warrant at least a sentence?
Girls are reported as attempting suicide more. But from the very article we're talking about, boys are repeatedly ignored when they give indications of suicide. And even to the extent that girls do attempt suicide more often, it's relevant that they use it as a cry for help and are more likely to receive that help (still not likely enough to receive it), while boys' intentions in committing suicide are more focused on actually completing it.
I agree it's not a competition. But pointing out demographic trends and that some groups are more likely to commit suicide doesn't mean that you think other groups don't deserve attention and support.
It's unclear why you're telling me it's not a competition for pointing out exactly that; the article does the exact same thing (except with LGBT youth and nonwhite youth), but it'd be silly for someone to come in and say that the author is trying to turn it into a competition.
It's especially galling that you're accusing me of trying to turn it into a competition when the comment I was replying to (and you yourself!) jumped in entirely out of the blue to argue that girls have it worse, while I made no statement that boys have it worse.
> It's especially galling that you're accusing me of trying to turn it into a competition when the comment I was replying to jumped in entirely out of the blue to argue that girls have it worse
Why would you assume my words were "accusing" you of anything, rather than just a general observation as part of a conversation that people are having? Presumably the OP you were responding to would potentially also read my reply to you and also see what I am saying.
Or maybe I was just trying to head off people replying to my own post accusing me of making it into a competition, by making it clear that I have already considered that and agree with it, but still felt the rest of my post was a contribution to the discussion.
Suicide is really easy if you actually want to die. I assume "attempted suicide" is most often closer to a cry for help than a genuine attempt to end one's life.
I'm not sure about that. Maybe it's the best solution to the problem of finding an easy way to commit suicide relatively painlessly. If you don't mind experiencing extreme discomfort, there are easier ways to commit suicide. I.e. ways that require less effort.
I'm not sure about with children, but with adults men are more likely to use a gun, at least in the U.S. I think partly that's due to access, but it may also point to some other gender difference.
Even in places with strictly limited access to guns (e.g. the U.K., Japan), you see the same pattern of men committing suicide at a higher rate than women. The hypothesis I find most compelling is that the intentions behind suicides are different between the sexes, though it's also likely that women are generally more hesitant to use methods that disfigure the body (and are more effective) than are men, even when intention is controlled for.
I think it's something along the lines of the latter--men are more likely to use violent means that are more effective where women are more likely to use means such as pills, which are less effective (but can still lead to permanent damage). Additionally, violent means lead to instant death more often so there's less opportunity to back out or for someone else to intervene.
So there are certainly gender differences, but it's not clear that it's a difference of intent.
"Suicide is really easy if you actually want to die."
It's also really easy to screw it up, and many people do, some even after many attempts.
Not everybody is super diligent in researching the most effective methods, and some people may be genuine in their desire to die but are impulsive about it so may not choose the most effective method in their desperation to kill themselves now.
I'm not sure if we as outsiders are in any position to judge the sincerity of another's wish to die.
> I'm not sure if we as outsiders are in any position to judge the sincerity of another's wish to die.
In individual cases, you may be right. But I think it's best to try to find the truth when talking about something so impactful as suicide as a general phenomenon.
And I am of course not denying that genuine attempts at suicide can fail. But that seems unlikely to be the key to understanding the massive gender disparities at hand here.
One of the bizarre things is that some people, when they commit suicide, are concerned about leaving a messy corpse. They don't want to use a gun, or a knife, because it would leave such a mess. So instead, they chug a bottle of pills, immediately call 911 when they realize they don't want to die, and get their stomach pumped.
Unsatisfied with good suicide attempts going to waste, 4chan has found a method that's cheap, widely available, effective even with medical attention, and leaves the body completely unmarked.
Men are more likely to succeed with suicide regardless of the method. Men who overdose on medicine takes much higher dosages and therefore succeeds more often etc.
The reason women don't succeed is because they aren't as serious and therefore chooses dosages or methods where you are very unlikely to die, as can be seen in this study for example:
Some commenters in this thread seem to think that boys aren't as valued as girls, and I haven't seen any evidence for that. In fact, in many ways, the opposite seems true.
The statistics regarding suicide don't prove that boys are less valued than girls. That's my only point here.
The abstract also makes the distinction that boys are much more successful in actually committing suicide than girls, so I don't see how this proves that girls are more troubled.
The difference is that it's very cut and dry with POC and LGBT. Across gender lines the difference is murkier in adolescence - one attempts suicide at higher rates, but the other succeeds more often.
The point is that gender still plays a far larger role in the structure of suicide demographics than either race or being LGBT, and it's odd to exclude any mention of that. The fact that boys commit suicide at 4x the rate of girls while girls attempt suicide at 3x the rate of boys is both interesting and more powerful in understanding the epidemiology of suicide than less elevated rates in smaller demographics.
I've struggled with suicidal thoughts throughout my entire life, as far back as I can remember. Both of my parents struggle with untreated mental illness that had a major impact on my upbringing. They were often very emotionally abusive and sometime physically abusive throughout my childhood. There was no such thing as positive reinforcement in our household, we lived our childhoods just trying not be punished and it was at times very difficult. When I went through a divorce in my early 30's, I called my mom to break the news and she responded by screaming at the top of her lungs at me. She would later tell me that she was trying to scare me into making sure that I had made the right decision. That night was closest I had come to crossing the rubicon in many years. I still don't fully understand how a mother could talk their child this way in such a difficult moment, but such is life.
Years later, I was diagnosed with ADHD which answered so many deep questions about why I am the way I am (and why my parents are the way they are). Life is simply harder for folks with ADHD, we struggle with executive function in ways that neurotypical folks don't often think about.
Strangely, one of most impactful moments towards reducing my recurring suicidal thoughts involved magic mushrooms. During a trip, I visualized telling all of the people in my life that I wanted to leave, explaining in detail why I didn't want to live anymore. It was the first time that I gave myself the space to ask myself if I really, truly wanted to leave. And I realized that I wasn't ready. Not yet.
> ... When I went through a divorce in my early 30's, I called my mom to break the news and she responded by screaming at the top of her lungs at me. She would later tell me that she was trying to scare me into making sure that I had made the right decision. That night was closest I had come to crossing the rubicon in many years. I still don't fully understand how a mother could talk their child this way in such a difficult moment, but such is life.
Then Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents may offer some insight [1].
"Strangely, one of most impactful moments towards reducing my recurring suicidal thoughts involved magic mushrooms."
From everything we know about the dramatic effectiveness of psychedelics in treating depression in adults, I am cautiously optimistic that one day they'll be shown to be as effective in children as well (given the right therapeutic protocol, set, and setting).
> Strangely, one of most impactful moments towards reducing my recurring suicidal thoughts involved magic mushrooms.
Yes, and also, at least for me, poetry, i.e., Sexton: "Poetry led me by the hand out of madness." Rumi writes, "Choose love! Choose love! / Enter the rose garden, / let your soul make peace with the thorns."
Did it also influence your social relationships ? the people you ended up being friends with (or not if you didn't have the energy or reflexes to be social, can happen too).
Asking because often, people with some traits will click will similar minded people, anxious with anxious etc, which doesn't help rewiring your brain. And I assume having various kinds of people around helps finding better models, for expression, handling emotions, etc etc
My hypothesis, unencumbered with any evidence, is that modern society and parents have gotten very good at shielding small children from adversity and failure of any sort.
Hence, the children do not acquire any ability to deal with adversity and failure.
When they get older, parents can no longer control their environment such that they do not experience failure. By then the failures are more serious and the kids have no coping skills.
Another hypothesis not bothering with evidence, is that due to increased media, mass media, and internet media exposure, we lack a 'quasi-local' version of what success can look like in a meaningful way.
The internet and mass media have 'de-smallified' our world, in that we're in constant exposure to those who have made it. They tell us their secrets, how they made it, and when it doesn't work for us, we get blame ourselves and take our failures as personal. There is an extreme selection bias for success in what we see in the world.
Failure, in that same sense, is hidden. Kids don't see it except on rare occasions where it can be spun positively. Kids aren't exposed to the real grinding failures of just trying to get by.
So we have two very different distributions forming childhood mental frameworks about what success looks like. Likewise, exposure is more and more purely digital. There's no grounding in any of this, or acknowledgement that most of why anything happens is due to circumstance and random chance.
Youth get put in a situation where success is effectively (based on their abilities and view of success) impossible.
Why then must failure or adversity be learned at the childhood or "small child" age?
If the end result is to obtain coping skills, what exactly are these skills? Are they only obtainable during childhood? Are there examples of adults who lack coping skills yet had "unshielded" lives?
Toddlerhood teaches us all kinds of things, like closing a door with your fingers wrapped around the door hurts. We learn an awful lot about how to not hurt ourselves by hurting ourselves.
Our muscles get stronger by stressing them to failure. Is there any inherent reason the mind does not respond the same way?
Me, I walked to kindergarten both ways, about a 3/4 mile walk, by myself. These days, it would be considered child neglect. I was one of those "free range" kids, as were all the others.
I received one of the last chemistry sets that contained a bunsen burner, copper sulphate, and experiments with hydrochloric acid. I grew up just before the "everyone is a winner" movement. In high school, my preoccupation was shredding tires on my Mustang. At about that time, the cops finally shut down the high school drags in downtown Phoenix, just before I was able to participate. What a drag :-/
I got an Eagle scout with zero involvement of my parents. I had my own business for spending money. I got into fist fights with other boys. I build a flame thrower out of a lawnmower. My mom despaired as the driveway was black with tire marks.
It was a good time to be a boy. And in no way was I different from the other boys. We'd shred their tires, too. During my entire K-12 time, the only two deaths in the entire schools were two boys who got smacked by running into traffic. No suicides.
I feel kinda sorry for later generations with their helicopter parents.
>> Toddlerhood teaches us all kinds of things, like closing a door with your fingers wrapped around the door hurts. We learn an awful lot about how to not hurt ourselves by hurting ourselves.
This is immediate feedback loop.
>> Me, I walked to kindergarten both ways...
You've lead a great life and had great opportunities, I'm so happy for you, but this type of self-righteousness is completely insensitive in this serious and complex issue.
>> I feel kinda sorry for later generations with their helicopter parents.
Being slightly uncomfortable (getting muddy, having a long walk home from the park, waiting ages for something)
Not being immediately consoled when something doesn't go your way but you're not injured, such as a toddler falling on the floor when getting the hang of walking
Strange how little attention is given to the perspective of Trevor:
1) he was intense, smarter than his peers (probably a lot), and also physicially superior to them. You might think this is good, but think about it for 5 seconds: it's extremely isolating.
2) he got rejected ... and rejected ... and rejected. First, by his classmates and schoolmates ... then
3) the schools responded to this, not by figuring out both sides of the story, but by dumping schools him, despite Trevor obviously putting in extra effort to satisfy everything demanded of him
4) Trevor's skiing is striking: clearly, 99.9% of the time, Trevor was using willpower to satisfy whatever he thought others wanted of him. He must have done this a lot since even in situations where it was beyond obvious nobody suspected this is what he was doing.
5) it is mentioned that both of his parents had similar habits. Both parents were driven, and kind, really trying to help people.
This paints an entirely different picture, doesn't it?
In short confrontations with others, Trevor was irresistibly nice. In longer confrontations (willpower will falter occasionally), nobody likes him (because he is superior to the other children. Not even because he actually is, but because he is intense: he will put real effort into learning a lot of things, from English to skiing, dating to "politics").
And of course, the problem these parents and children have with the suicide ... is how it affects them. That, perhaps, they ... how to put it ... "weren't letting Trevor be Trevor", does not register to anyone at all. That they put him through hell, probably asking more and more of him, until he lost control, then punished him, and then dumped him ... not a second's thought is wasted on that. Everyone is just protecting themselves, and most are simply protecting themselves. He needed to be acknowledged and rewarded for the effort he put in. But these days (not that it was much better before, but it was better), we demand any such effort be hidden and buried deeply (a lot of schools don't even give grades, at all, anymore).
For reasons that I cannot fathom we seem to think this will make people "more equal", when in reality, of course, it rewards being born in a powerful position in society, and focusing on ability rewards putting in effort. Certainly with the current availability of learning materials.
Trevor wasn't depressed at all, I'd bet. I bet he was working on 5 side projects the week he killed himself.
What would have helped? NOT rejecting him. Certainly not throwing him out of school. Instead, provide him with a real challenge. But for the same reason these people can't see what happened (they're completely caught up in their own feelings), they couldn't allow Trevor to, for instance, move up a grade (or two). That, obviously, would have hurt many feelings.
Trevor killed himself because he was rejected by everyone around him because he performed better than them, and because probably his parents and everyone else kept repeating to him that this happened because he still wasn't good enough. Reality is that he cared deeply about people who couldn't give a rat's ass about him, thought his life worth less than satisfying their immediate feeling on the spot, and after the x-thousandth dumping he got blamed for for reasons he couldn't understand, he ended it. He died because he was not average, trying to be better, in a sea of people who cannot deal with even a fleeting moment of impression that someone might be better than them, or that they might need to put in some work to catch up to him.
"nobody likes him (because he is superior to the other children)."
No. They didn't like him because he attacked other children.
From the article:
"He could be charming, generous, and humane. But he could also turn suddenly violent. At my son’s seventh-birthday party, Trevor bit another boy on the ear so hard that the mark was still visible when that child next went to school. Trevor terrorized the smaller kids in the class, and, if they pushed back, he would try to get them in trouble. He was shrewd in his manipulations. In second grade, he tried extracting cash from other boys by threatening to spread embarrassing rumors."
"He pushed one child down some stairs; the mother asked the school to insure physical distance between the boys in the stairwell. Playing paintball, Trevor sneaked up behind a boy and fired close-range into his helmet; the child developed blurry vision. Another boy came home from school with red marks on his neck; the school told his mother that Trevor had choked him."
This means he was always using willpower to be nice to other children. Call it acting. He was good at it, so good people wouldn't realise he was acting for weeks or months. He was not "suddenly violent", he was pestered for days/weeks/maybe even months and eventually lost control. Nobody turns suddenly violent without reason, you've just missed something.
This long list of one-sided remarks with no explanation is typical of schools where teacher supervision is totally lacking. Of course they still see the explosion, no matter how bad the supervision. What they miss is the reason. They see how it ends, not the buildup towards it. And, of course, the buildup is the problem, not that a kid eventually loses control. Every kid and adult will eventually lose control, given enough stress.
That the kid was able to do so much damage is also an indication that oversight totally failed. Was there no warning sign before that helmet shot? really? Yes, of course there were. Many of them. They just totally missed everything. It isn't that nothing was happening in the class, it's just that shooting another kid in the face is the minimum threshold for getting to a teacher's attention that maybe some supervision is necessary. Then, of course, the teacher demands some extreme punishment and declares "everything went so fast". Everything went "so fast" while this teacher was looking at these kids for hours ... Either their ability to predict social interactions is worse than a dog's (unlikely), or the teacher was playing angry birds for hours at that point. The second factor also explains why the teacher demands extreme punishment: to hide that they're not supervising the kids.
> But he could also turn suddenly violent. At my son’s seventh-birthday party, Trevor bit another boy on the ear so hard that the mark was still visible when that child next went to school.
Okay, I can’t say I thought they were going to talk about a bite visible the next day. Not saying it isn’t violence, just not what I was expecting with that lead-in.
Lockdowns probably but I fail to see why masks would cause such issues if countries like China and Japan were wearing them relatively often before the pandemic.
The whole story of Trevor is just heartbreaking to me. I see a lot of my experiences helping someone get proper mental health care in this story, and the fact that between the restrictions that COVID created and how ill-equiped the mental health sector is unless you send someone to a hospital is awful.
From my experience, putting someone in a hospital or other treatment facility is often presented as the only way you can get help for serious conditions, but for most people, the idea of being sent away to a hospital or other facility for an extended period of time can be very damaging, especially in the immediate term. For people who need that level of care, the feeling of being abandoned, or that your friends/family can't deal with you anymore or don't want you around.
You also have the fact that for a lot of people who end up in these facilities, do so because they have been forced in some way, shape or form to be there. Couple that with these places often feeling less like hospitals or places of medicine and treatment, and more like prisons, these environments can make you feel like a criminal or unwanted member of society.
Finally, while I don't want to paint all who work in places like this with the same brush, my experiences have shown me that it is not that uncommon for the doctors and support staff who work in these places to be somewhat uncaring to those in their care. And, while I understand that working in a place like this would obviously have a significant impact on your own mental health and make you jaded, from my experience what a lot of people who end up in these places want more than anything is empathy and compassion.
I'm not saying that we should abolish hospital treatment for mental health, because this kind of treatment in a lot of cases is both necessary and effective. My thoughts here are that for cases like Trevor, there should be some kind of service or help available that provides the right degree of ongoing care without having to upend a persons life in ways that can be damaging.
I'm going to make a provocative suggestion. The only thing these parents did wrong was limiting Trevor's Fortnite time.
I'm not saying it would have made the difference or any such awful thing. But video games can be a nice time-killer when life is being shitty and you need a way to just... get through it.
If your kid is suffering and nothing you're doing is working and he's self-medicating... maybe it's working. Not everything kids do for themselves is some vice that you have to protect them from.
When I was young I had a period of depression for no real reason. The thing that helped me most was binge watching Myth-busters. Like hours at a time. Thankfully I was feeling better before I made it to the end of the series.
While watching it I’d feel much better and usually feel better after as well.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 166 ms ] threadI mean... just reading about their life before the suicides already stressed me out.
EDIT: Also, the article spent very little time talking about the human impact of COVID lockdowns (it mentioned them, but did not dwell). Passages like this:
> I asked Angela if we could come by for a condolence call. She said yes, if we were vaccinated. Because vaccines were not yet available to children, she added, “Don’t bring George.” She paused, then explained, “It’s just—because of Agnes. She can’t get vaccinated yet, either. And she’s all I have left.” In the following weeks, Angela told her story over and over to any friend who asked, as though she could contain it through repetition. For Billy, even conversational boilerplate was a struggle.
Make me think the parents were a bit over the top with regards to covid lockdowns. Children not being able to see friends? Human companionship (physical presence) is a basic human need on par with food and water. No one's surprised when a child dies from lack of food. Lack of intimate friendship is the same.
EDIT 2:
> Trevor, the child of well-off, educated parents, had far better mental-health support than most American children, but was not saved by it
In my experience, it's better to come from a lower middle class family (so enough money to eat and have everything you need, but not too much), than to come from outright wealth. Money is not a solution to every problem, and too much money and luxury is the root cause of many mental illness.
[1] I wrote this comment before reading the article, but the article later goes on to talk about how we was abused. I don't want to say 'I told you so', but the signs were all there. It's interesting... the New Yorker doesn't even stop to question whether the rise in child suicide rates may be due to a rise in child sex abuse.
Yeah I’m gonna doubt that. Not that dual career households don’t have their own difficulties but that’s nothing compared to the effects of poverty. The article mentions a huge effect size of being black. I would guess wealthy families have drastically lower rates of child suicide.
We can only try to do the best with the tools we have, but the candy-coated life we think kids should have I doubt ever really existed. Maybe in the nuclear family 1950s. If you were white, at least.
Both money and family time are necessary for kids to thrive. If you have one and not the other, it's going to be a problem.
> Trevor’s mother, Angela Matthews, a driven intellectual-property lawyer in her early forties, studied ballet and still carries herself like a dancer. Her intelligence and the intensity of her character can make her intimidating, but she is also given to acts of tremendous kindness. Trevor’s father, Billy Matthews, who works in finance, is affable and athletic. They have a daughter, Agnes, three and a half years younger than Trevor; Billy also has two sons, Trey and Tristen, from a previous marriage.
To extrapolate from this that they are over consumed with work and failed to parent their child seems like an extreme and frankly offensive claim. The term “hot shot” is never used and even if it had been, says nothing about their availability as a parent. You can be a hot shot at your career and still be available.
The problem for this child is, unquestionably, that he was the victim of a sexual predator at a camp.
The prevalence of these super career oriented, damagingly absent parents is for sure much rarer than implied. And probably not even a strong predictor of being neglectful parents
Awesome. I still stand by everything I said.
> (2) your statements assume, without possibility of falsification, that such mental illness is not at all due to environmental factors
No, they quite obviously don't. I'm pointing out the difficulty of knowing what contributed to a child's death in the context of mental illness, which can be both genetic and environmental in origin, and is not always in a parent's ability to influence. You can have two perfectly nice parents raise a literal psychopath and no one knows why. Happens all the time.
The idea that you can ignore this and zero in on the parents based on the info in this article is completely contrary to our scientific understanding of child (and adult) psychology.
The abuse, on the other hand, is obviously an important contributor, as you said. No dispute there.
[1] As in... my parents had a curfew and didn't let me drink..., so totally normal rules for a high schooler, but I felt that the world was ending and everything was so unfair.
Since we talk so much about personality choice and responsibly in the US: it's their decision to take that risk, not yours.
While the death rate was low, it was way, way, way higher than usual cause of death at this age.
Also think about it in another way: a disease which impairs 1 out of 5000 people is not considered "rare" by any health authorities. For people 20 to 40, the death rate of covid was between 1/500 and 1/1000.
And i have another point for more economically-minded people: people from age 0 to 25 cost money to society. People 25 to 55 are net positives, as they contribute much to the economy: they consume a lot, they build a lot, they have energy for associative tasks and for child rearing. They are perhaps the most productive members of society on an island. Then consider people 55+. They are less productive, on an island, but sometime they have so much experience that loosing one without warning can set a company or some research back a couple of year. Also, they consume a lot, so loosing a lot of this population suddenly would destroy any economy riding on internal consumption.
The last argument is probably why policymakers of countries not know to care much about their workers still reacted quite fast (maybe overreacted: i don't think so, but i understand pleople saying that).
They are a public health menace, and should be quarantined until they are no longer infectious.
> Although it is too early to quantify fully the long-term impact of the pandemic, it has exacerbated the burgeoning crisis. The C.D.C. found that in 2020 mental-health-related visits to hospital emergency departments by people between the ages of twelve and twenty-seven were a third higher than in 2019. The C.D.C. also reported that, during the first seven months of lockdown, U.S. hospitals experienced a twenty-four-per-cent increase in mental-health-related emergency visits for children aged five to eleven, and a thirty-one-per-cent increase for those aged twelve to seventeen. Among the general population, suicides declined, but this change masks a slight increase among younger people and a spike among the country’s Black, Latinx, and Native American populations. Last October, the American Academy of Pediatrics declared that the pandemic had accelerated the worrying trends in child and adolescent mental health, resulting in what it described as a “national emergency.”
Personally I would have chosen to focus on the nihilism of consumer materialism, starting with this poor child's list of empty "goals".
[0] https://www.kidsdata.org/topic/210/suicides-gender/table
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I realize that you're expressing a feeling there and I'm sure the feeling is a good and well-intentioned one, but the problem is that inflammatory rhetoric like that, on the internet, just runs into other people's intense feelings and blows up. Then we get a dumb and nasty thread instead of a thoughtful curious one.
There are much better ways to express your concerns that don't break the HN guidelines. I'm just asking you to use one of those ways, instead of this way.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
There's an aggressive societal push towards taking an apathetic stance towards the mental health among boys. White boys from poorer communities seem the most egregiously affected by this but they are hardly the only ones.
Certain groups who feel that there is a zero sum game when it comes to empathy seem especially threatened by the notion that we pay any attention to this issue and aggressivly push back against any attempts to talk about it out of some sense of moral superiority.
when I saw those idiots with the tikki torches, what I saw was insecurity by people withheld from any sense of meaningful identity. So much so that they revert to the ridiculous notion of being proud of their skin color because they have little else to go on. This root of the issue hasn't been addressed at all and by continuing to shame boys for being boys and creating an outlet for positive masculinity, we are leading society towards a very dark path.
happy?
The sarcastic "happy?" is maybe an indicator that this is not laid out in exactly the least emotional way, which is maybe part of the problem of clarity - do you have anything more specific in mind when you refer to this seemingly crazy movement against the very idea of helping suicidal young boys? That's a very broad, seemingly non-political thing to be "against".
You're right. having grown up in massachusetts, and having spent a good amount of time in califonia, I've grown a somewhat kneejerk reaction to liberal hypocracy. Don't get my wrong, I have no love for republican policies but Ive also developed a strong distaste for how certain liberal ideologies even with reasonably sound ideas at their core, percolate to the more fringe leaves of the masses.
case in point, the notion of white privilege.
Root idea:
historical exploitation (to put it mildly) has created a system of inequality that exists to this day and largely privileges certain groups of people while disadvantaging others. We need to understand where we are in that place so that we can take steps to dismantle those institutions and create more equitable opportunities for people.
What well meaning idiots end up spouting at the edge (and yes I've heard such things come out of white people's mouths):
white people are all racist and toxic and should be sorry for existing.
And a more direct comparison, take the notion of toxic masculinity:
root idea: Societal expectations of boys are rooted in an imperative for boys to be behave in ways that are maladaptive. certain traits we define as masculine such as aggression, can result in behaviors that are deplorable. Its imperative for a healthy society to create a definition of masculinity thats rooted healthy positive behaviors and to accept traits that we associate with femininity as well in order for an individual to be emotionally "whole." Part of this means redefining roles for men taht embrace the good qualities of masculinity (healthy competitiveness, jovial pride, brotherhood and a modicum of stoicism) while avoiding the negative traits, (entitlement, tribalism, blaming others for ones failiures)
* What well meaning zealots end up spouting at the edge
"kill all men." "toxic masculinity bad mmkay" "I drink male tears"
Now to answer your question about why I bring up far right to a story about suicide. Its all connected. People express mental anguish differently. Some of the kids going though difficulty right now will get through it and find their way to a healthy adulthood. Some people, seeking an outlet to justify their feelings will join groups promoting maladaptive behavior in a desperate bid to feel part of an in group. This is where I make the connection to the tiki torch groups. Others sadly take the quick path out the metaphorical door.
Now you might ask, Why do I care so much about what fanatics at the edge think? Its because they are the straw man talking heads like tucker carlson push when trying to make their own regressive agenda seem like the sane choice. Its ultimately counterproductive towards the very ideals we should be working towards as a society.
anyways, props to you if you get this far down. Hope it clarifies my point
I think you are making some common missteps though. What I'm about to say sounds like whataboutism, but it's complementary: I have heard the words "I can't wait to kill liberals" (in reference to hypothetical civil violence after Jan 6th) come out of conservatives' mouths (for lack of a more specific word than "conservative"). This attitude is more commonly expressed not as an explicit desire for violence, but as simple hatred (and, relevantly, a mockery of suicide in specific), and, again sticking to personal experience only, has contributed to fear and depression in a couple young people I know. I try not to hold that against conservative ideology. More specifically, what I try not to do is make ominous, sarcastic, or broadly negative implications, nor lament the inconsistency of conservatives as a monolithic group as "conservative hypocrisy".
I know, analogies are bad - I am not saying that the problem you're describing is just a liberals vs conservatives thing, nor that there is an equivalent problem with the roles altered or reversed, nor that, even if there were, that we should always bring up one when talking about the other. What I am saying is that it's very tempting to look at extremely broad, immoral generalizations being made by somebody, and use them as an excuse to make our own opposite, lesser generalizations: "nobody gives a shit about young boys", "aggressive societal push ...", "there is a war on white people" (the last one not from you, obviously, but a related example).
But the point here is that the article omits this critical fact, even though being male identified is overwhelmingly the strongest demographic factor indicating risk of suicide. Doesn't that warrant at least a sentence?
It's not entirely unreasonable to suggest that "more attempts overall" = "more troubled"
Maybe boys are overall less troubled than girls but just choose more effective forms of suicide.
Maybe boys choose more effective forms of suicide because they are in fact way more troubled.
Really though, it's not a competition. We should be able to help both boys and girls, in ways that are effective for each group.
I agree it's not a competition. But pointing out demographic trends and that some groups are more likely to commit suicide doesn't mean that you think other groups don't deserve attention and support.
It's unclear why you're telling me it's not a competition for pointing out exactly that; the article does the exact same thing (except with LGBT youth and nonwhite youth), but it'd be silly for someone to come in and say that the author is trying to turn it into a competition.
It's especially galling that you're accusing me of trying to turn it into a competition when the comment I was replying to (and you yourself!) jumped in entirely out of the blue to argue that girls have it worse, while I made no statement that boys have it worse.
Why would you assume my words were "accusing" you of anything, rather than just a general observation as part of a conversation that people are having? Presumably the OP you were responding to would potentially also read my reply to you and also see what I am saying.
Or maybe I was just trying to head off people replying to my own post accusing me of making it into a competition, by making it clear that I have already considered that and agree with it, but still felt the rest of my post was a contribution to the discussion.
So there are certainly gender differences, but it's not clear that it's a difference of intent.
It's also really easy to screw it up, and many people do, some even after many attempts.
Not everybody is super diligent in researching the most effective methods, and some people may be genuine in their desire to die but are impulsive about it so may not choose the most effective method in their desperation to kill themselves now.
I'm not sure if we as outsiders are in any position to judge the sincerity of another's wish to die.
In individual cases, you may be right. But I think it's best to try to find the truth when talking about something so impactful as suicide as a general phenomenon.
And I am of course not denying that genuine attempts at suicide can fail. But that seems unlikely to be the key to understanding the massive gender disparities at hand here.
Unsatisfied with good suicide attempts going to waste, 4chan has found a method that's cheap, widely available, effective even with medical attention, and leaves the body completely unmarked.
The reason women don't succeed is because they aren't as serious and therefore chooses dosages or methods where you are very unlikely to die, as can be seen in this study for example:
https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12...
The statistics regarding suicide don't prove that boys are less valued than girls. That's my only point here.
Years later, I was diagnosed with ADHD which answered so many deep questions about why I am the way I am (and why my parents are the way they are). Life is simply harder for folks with ADHD, we struggle with executive function in ways that neurotypical folks don't often think about.
Strangely, one of most impactful moments towards reducing my recurring suicidal thoughts involved magic mushrooms. During a trip, I visualized telling all of the people in my life that I wanted to leave, explaining in detail why I didn't want to live anymore. It was the first time that I gave myself the space to ask myself if I really, truly wanted to leave. And I realized that I wasn't ready. Not yet.
Then Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents may offer some insight [1].
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23129659-adult-children-...
From everything we know about the dramatic effectiveness of psychedelics in treating depression in adults, I am cautiously optimistic that one day they'll be shown to be as effective in children as well (given the right therapeutic protocol, set, and setting).
Yes, and also, at least for me, poetry, i.e., Sexton: "Poetry led me by the hand out of madness." Rumi writes, "Choose love! Choose love! / Enter the rose garden, / let your soul make peace with the thorns."
Psilocybin aka (Magic Mushrooms) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin
Psilocybin Mushrooms : https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Psilocybin_mushrooms
Psychoactive Substance Index : https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Psychoactive_substance_index
Psychedelic Therapy aka (Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_therapy
SearX > psychedelic-assisted-therapy : <https://search.snopyta.org/search?q=psychedelic-assisted-the...>
- Edit: Remember! Always Consulate your Doctor / Psychiatrist
Asking because often, people with some traits will click will similar minded people, anxious with anxious etc, which doesn't help rewiring your brain. And I assume having various kinds of people around helps finding better models, for expression, handling emotions, etc etc
take care
https://archive.ph/NIRCs
Hence, the children do not acquire any ability to deal with adversity and failure.
When they get older, parents can no longer control their environment such that they do not experience failure. By then the failures are more serious and the kids have no coping skills.
I find it funny you call me out for being honest.
The internet and mass media have 'de-smallified' our world, in that we're in constant exposure to those who have made it. They tell us their secrets, how they made it, and when it doesn't work for us, we get blame ourselves and take our failures as personal. There is an extreme selection bias for success in what we see in the world.
Failure, in that same sense, is hidden. Kids don't see it except on rare occasions where it can be spun positively. Kids aren't exposed to the real grinding failures of just trying to get by.
So we have two very different distributions forming childhood mental frameworks about what success looks like. Likewise, exposure is more and more purely digital. There's no grounding in any of this, or acknowledgement that most of why anything happens is due to circumstance and random chance.
Youth get put in a situation where success is effectively (based on their abilities and view of success) impossible.
If the end result is to obtain coping skills, what exactly are these skills? Are they only obtainable during childhood? Are there examples of adults who lack coping skills yet had "unshielded" lives?
Our muscles get stronger by stressing them to failure. Is there any inherent reason the mind does not respond the same way?
Me, I walked to kindergarten both ways, about a 3/4 mile walk, by myself. These days, it would be considered child neglect. I was one of those "free range" kids, as were all the others.
I received one of the last chemistry sets that contained a bunsen burner, copper sulphate, and experiments with hydrochloric acid. I grew up just before the "everyone is a winner" movement. In high school, my preoccupation was shredding tires on my Mustang. At about that time, the cops finally shut down the high school drags in downtown Phoenix, just before I was able to participate. What a drag :-/
I got an Eagle scout with zero involvement of my parents. I had my own business for spending money. I got into fist fights with other boys. I build a flame thrower out of a lawnmower. My mom despaired as the driveway was black with tire marks.
It was a good time to be a boy. And in no way was I different from the other boys. We'd shred their tires, too. During my entire K-12 time, the only two deaths in the entire schools were two boys who got smacked by running into traffic. No suicides.
I feel kinda sorry for later generations with their helicopter parents.
This is immediate feedback loop.
>> Me, I walked to kindergarten both ways...
You've lead a great life and had great opportunities, I'm so happy for you, but this type of self-righteousness is completely insensitive in this serious and complex issue.
>> I feel kinda sorry for later generations with their helicopter parents.
This is an insensitive thing to say.
Not being immediately consoled when something doesn't go your way but you're not injured, such as a toddler falling on the floor when getting the hang of walking
1) he was intense, smarter than his peers (probably a lot), and also physicially superior to them. You might think this is good, but think about it for 5 seconds: it's extremely isolating.
2) he got rejected ... and rejected ... and rejected. First, by his classmates and schoolmates ... then
3) the schools responded to this, not by figuring out both sides of the story, but by dumping schools him, despite Trevor obviously putting in extra effort to satisfy everything demanded of him
4) Trevor's skiing is striking: clearly, 99.9% of the time, Trevor was using willpower to satisfy whatever he thought others wanted of him. He must have done this a lot since even in situations where it was beyond obvious nobody suspected this is what he was doing.
5) it is mentioned that both of his parents had similar habits. Both parents were driven, and kind, really trying to help people.
This paints an entirely different picture, doesn't it?
In short confrontations with others, Trevor was irresistibly nice. In longer confrontations (willpower will falter occasionally), nobody likes him (because he is superior to the other children. Not even because he actually is, but because he is intense: he will put real effort into learning a lot of things, from English to skiing, dating to "politics").
And of course, the problem these parents and children have with the suicide ... is how it affects them. That, perhaps, they ... how to put it ... "weren't letting Trevor be Trevor", does not register to anyone at all. That they put him through hell, probably asking more and more of him, until he lost control, then punished him, and then dumped him ... not a second's thought is wasted on that. Everyone is just protecting themselves, and most are simply protecting themselves. He needed to be acknowledged and rewarded for the effort he put in. But these days (not that it was much better before, but it was better), we demand any such effort be hidden and buried deeply (a lot of schools don't even give grades, at all, anymore).
For reasons that I cannot fathom we seem to think this will make people "more equal", when in reality, of course, it rewards being born in a powerful position in society, and focusing on ability rewards putting in effort. Certainly with the current availability of learning materials.
Trevor wasn't depressed at all, I'd bet. I bet he was working on 5 side projects the week he killed himself.
What would have helped? NOT rejecting him. Certainly not throwing him out of school. Instead, provide him with a real challenge. But for the same reason these people can't see what happened (they're completely caught up in their own feelings), they couldn't allow Trevor to, for instance, move up a grade (or two). That, obviously, would have hurt many feelings.
Trevor killed himself because he was rejected by everyone around him because he performed better than them, and because probably his parents and everyone else kept repeating to him that this happened because he still wasn't good enough. Reality is that he cared deeply about people who couldn't give a rat's ass about him, thought his life worth less than satisfying their immediate feeling on the spot, and after the x-thousandth dumping he got blamed for for reasons he couldn't understand, he ended it. He died because he was not average, trying to be better, in a sea of people who cannot deal with even a fleeting moment of impression that someone might be better than them, or that they might need to put in some work to catch up to him.
No. They didn't like him because he attacked other children.
From the article:
"He could be charming, generous, and humane. But he could also turn suddenly violent. At my son’s seventh-birthday party, Trevor bit another boy on the ear so hard that the mark was still visible when that child next went to school. Trevor terrorized the smaller kids in the class, and, if they pushed back, he would try to get them in trouble. He was shrewd in his manipulations. In second grade, he tried extracting cash from other boys by threatening to spread embarrassing rumors."
"He pushed one child down some stairs; the mother asked the school to insure physical distance between the boys in the stairwell. Playing paintball, Trevor sneaked up behind a boy and fired close-range into his helmet; the child developed blurry vision. Another boy came home from school with red marks on his neck; the school told his mother that Trevor had choked him."
This long list of one-sided remarks with no explanation is typical of schools where teacher supervision is totally lacking. Of course they still see the explosion, no matter how bad the supervision. What they miss is the reason. They see how it ends, not the buildup towards it. And, of course, the buildup is the problem, not that a kid eventually loses control. Every kid and adult will eventually lose control, given enough stress.
That the kid was able to do so much damage is also an indication that oversight totally failed. Was there no warning sign before that helmet shot? really? Yes, of course there were. Many of them. They just totally missed everything. It isn't that nothing was happening in the class, it's just that shooting another kid in the face is the minimum threshold for getting to a teacher's attention that maybe some supervision is necessary. Then, of course, the teacher demands some extreme punishment and declares "everything went so fast". Everything went "so fast" while this teacher was looking at these kids for hours ... Either their ability to predict social interactions is worse than a dog's (unlikely), or the teacher was playing angry birds for hours at that point. The second factor also explains why the teacher demands extreme punishment: to hide that they're not supervising the kids.
Okay, I can’t say I thought they were going to talk about a bite visible the next day. Not saying it isn’t violence, just not what I was expecting with that lead-in.
From my experience, putting someone in a hospital or other treatment facility is often presented as the only way you can get help for serious conditions, but for most people, the idea of being sent away to a hospital or other facility for an extended period of time can be very damaging, especially in the immediate term. For people who need that level of care, the feeling of being abandoned, or that your friends/family can't deal with you anymore or don't want you around.
You also have the fact that for a lot of people who end up in these facilities, do so because they have been forced in some way, shape or form to be there. Couple that with these places often feeling less like hospitals or places of medicine and treatment, and more like prisons, these environments can make you feel like a criminal or unwanted member of society.
Finally, while I don't want to paint all who work in places like this with the same brush, my experiences have shown me that it is not that uncommon for the doctors and support staff who work in these places to be somewhat uncaring to those in their care. And, while I understand that working in a place like this would obviously have a significant impact on your own mental health and make you jaded, from my experience what a lot of people who end up in these places want more than anything is empathy and compassion.
I'm not saying that we should abolish hospital treatment for mental health, because this kind of treatment in a lot of cases is both necessary and effective. My thoughts here are that for cases like Trevor, there should be some kind of service or help available that provides the right degree of ongoing care without having to upend a persons life in ways that can be damaging.
I'm not saying it would have made the difference or any such awful thing. But video games can be a nice time-killer when life is being shitty and you need a way to just... get through it.
If your kid is suffering and nothing you're doing is working and he's self-medicating... maybe it's working. Not everything kids do for themselves is some vice that you have to protect them from.
While watching it I’d feel much better and usually feel better after as well.