2009.03.24
The lonely death of a statistical outlier, age 10
He is nameless, faceless, thoroughly anonymous. Just a simple bar on a graph in a government report.
Yet he seems lonely even in that representation. On a bar chart of child suicides in Virginia in 2007, his bar stands off to the left, alone, above the number 10, denoting his age.
A statistical outlier.
Scan to the right, and you pass a series of zeroes over ages 11, 12, 13. Then a clump of teen suicides – all of them tragic, yet not so much as that solitary bar off to the left.
Was he an outlier in life, too, as alone with whatever sadness or circumstance lead him to this as his remote spot on the chart suggests?
I had pulled up annual report of Chief Medical Examiner of Virginia looking for data on alcohol related deaths. I paged through dozens of charts, graphs, maps before coming to “Suicide Deaths of Children” on page 84.
And there he was.
The questions rushed up to me: Who was he? Whose child was he? What could make a 10-year-old so unhappy as to think, at that tender age, that there was no need to go on? What about the poor parents, or whoever cared for him? Somewhere, there’s a mother, a father, a grandparent, a brother, a sister, a teacher, a neighbor, a friend, wondering what they missed. Could they have done more?
There’s only my wondering, and not much else to know in the report. He was one of 19 child suicides that year. I could guess at how he died. Most likely it was by gunshot or hanging. Those methods account for all but three of the child suicides that year. One inhaled a toxic agent, one jumped from a high place, one drowned.
I have a 10-year-old. My wife teaches 10-year-olds. Ten-year-olds don’t do these things.
Well, they do. Remember Aquan Lewis? A little more than a month ago, he was found hanging by his shirt collar on a hook in a bathroom at Oakton Elementary School in Evanston, Ill. Investigators found his footprint on a toilet. A coroner ruled the death a suicide.
He was in the fifth grade.
I have a fifth grader.
Unfathomable! Very difficult to wrap my mind around that one.
Comment by Museice — March 24, 2009 @ 1:30 pm
It makes you angry, very angry.
Comment by Valerie — March 24, 2009 @ 3:02 pm
I have always wondered what could drive a person to take such a drastic, permanent action for what is almost always a temporary situation. The fact that kids do it troubles me even more, because they often don;t fully understand the consequences of actions, or even what results a particular action may have. To have someone so young commit suicide is really, very hard to understand.
Comment by Other John — March 26, 2009 @ 3:38 pm
Sadly these tragedys happen and for who knows what reason. On a cold Thanksgiving Day in 1994 I sadly ran to me was the worst suicide call of my life (Im now a nurse at the time was actually a young volunteer of 20 with the Fire/Rescue Dept where I was living at the time) an 8 yr old boy hung himself in a closet at his grandparents house not too long after he’d already been removed by DSS due to abuse he’d been suffering at his home by his mom and more seriously his step-dad. There were rumors afterwards but the sad truth was this child felt he had no other options at such a young age left a mark on me to this day. I dont think any of us can begin to understand why a child so young would feel so hopeless and helpless so trying to understand why may not be the answer. Sadly the only result is to try and see warning signs (which are harder in younger individuals). What is and not normal behavior yes we all had our mood swings as kids but when children cry out for help (and sadly its there always in hindsight) we need to recognize it for what it is and medications arent the answer at that age (if anything medications tend to make the suicidal thoughts and ideations worse based on research) the answer is professional help from those who specialize in counseling for children,teens and young adults.
Comment by DJ — March 29, 2009 @ 5:07 am
I wish this would come down…every time I see the headline it depresses me. Hug your kids every day I guess is the message here.
Comment by Kristen — April 1, 2009 @ 11:16 am