The Rising Rates of Suicide and Depression Among Children

0:00 hi I want to talk to you today about depression and suicide I just got done doing a segment whittlin Smith this morning on HLN and today is April 8th and we have here locally in Denver Colorado as well as around the country have a real crisis when it comes to children having suicidal thoughts and actually completing suicide so I thought I would spend a couple minutes just doing a little bit of a deeper dive on

0:32 our segment the reason why we did it this morning is there was a JAMA article that came out that basically said that ER visits are skyrocketing for kids and suicidal thoughts that they have over the last ten years doubled in people coming into ers having suicidal thoughts there's over a million visits a year and the average age is 13 years old so

1:02 focusing on kids 43% of them are between the ages of 5 and 11 and if that doesn't give you pause I really don't know what would I mean almost half of ER visits for suicidal thoughts or attempts are for children ages 5 to 11 risk factors are depression so if you have a kid who is expressing feeling excessively sad

1:34 they're highly irritable they're changing their friends or just withdrawing from social relationships all of a sudden their interests are change they don't want to go to their activity or their sport anymore they're you know drawing pretty dark things they're writing about dark things if they have social media if you look on their social media and if there's anything concerning if they're cutting if they're engaging in just kind of high-risk behaviors drugs alcohol you need to take it seriously really

2:06 seriously also if there's any prior suicide attempts that's their risk factor for actually completing a suicide so if you are kid you know let's say at the age of 12 you took them to the hospital because they had suicidal thoughts or maybe they even attempted it and even even a year later you still need to be really on top of it because it's one of the top risk factors for actually completing a suicide people want to know why people ask me all the

2:35 time why why now in the last 50 years we have the highest levels of suicide not just amongst children but also amongst adults and so here's what I have to say about that as well as pretty much backed up by research number one for kids the pressure to succeed be perfect behind Cheevers attend top universities and colleges beyond the best sports team is driving our kids to experience depression low self-esteem and in some

3:06 cases having suicidal thoughts are actually completing suicides so this frantic manic obsession with having kids who are straight-a students and top athletes and the best at everything is literally almost avalanching a mental health crisis so parents really need to take a look at that really really what I hear parents say to me all the time is I just want make it to be happy if you

3:36 just want your kid to be happy then you want to focus on things like having a kid who has empathy having a kid who's a good team player having a kid who experiences failures and can persevere from them you can allow them to have failures to not give them a trophy for everything explain to them that they didn't make the 18 they made the B team you know I totally support the fact that maybe the best they could do this week

4:05 was b-minus on a test and that if they want those things to change that they could work harder and that is so important we're taking that away with beginning of this year we had that teacher write that article about lawn mower parents and I did a few segments on it if we continue to be lawn mower or bulldozer parents or a helicopter parents ever you want to put it we are really taking away our child's opportunity to

4:28 succeed number two is parent stress so when we look at risk factors for kids experiencing depression if their own parents are experiencing depression or experiencing high levels of stress and are dealing with it in dysfunctional ways or not even dealing with it our kids see that our kids model that and they feel it because we're more irritable were less patient we depend more on alcohol when we're experiencing high levels of stress so number two thing I would say is parents you need to

4:59 put that oxygen mask on yourself before you try to help your child you need to help yourself that is the reason why I wrote mommy burnout because people say to me well you really work with kids most the time and I said yes and I wrote a book on mothers because I know that if I can help the mental health of a mother or a father any caregiver of a child that child is better off and if we cannot

5:22 help parents with the depression and anxiety that they are feeling at epidemic levels we are gonna have a pretty tough time helping out our kids so number one is the pressure to achieve needs to change number two parents need to take care of their own stress and number three is technology and social media if you are allowing your child to be on technology and to be on snapchat and those kinds of things you are opening the door for them to potentially

5:54 experience cyber bullying for them to be exposed to some pretty dark things pornography other people's suicidal thoughts and it goes pretty unregulated most of the time so I'm a really big advocate there's a movement of saying that kids should wait till 8th until they have social media I support that and even then you have to assess your own child's are they really ready and how often are you gonna be checking passwords and content and their friends

6:21 postings and postings that your child is tagged in it's a way to really know what's going on in their world so I would encourage you if you're gonna allow your child to have it that you're checking in to it but I'm also going to encourage you you don't need to succumb to the peer pressure of Oh everybody has it or oh I'll never get invited to anything if I don't have you know a social media account I always say

6:43 it say to kids a real friend will find you and a real friend will still invite you to things if it's just based on convenience of a group chat or you know something on social media then maybe they're really not as good of a friend as you think just to end this to really drive home the importance of this topic of depression and suicide in our kids we are looking at the highest rates of suicide in 50 years not just among

7:11 children but also among adults we are looking at an increase of 33 percent over the last decade we are looking at suicide being now this second leading cause of death under the age of 35 and even specifically between the ages of 10 to 24 the second leading cause of death more than car accidents more than you know other things that we really worry about you know a kid being poisoned or drownings and other tragedies more than

7:43 that and at this point we're looking at statistically one in five teens experiencing depression sometime throughout their teenage years one in five so this is a topic that affects everybody if it doesn't immediately affect your child it very likely affects one of their close friends a neighbor of friends child so this is something we all need to care about and the last thing I'll say being here in the Denver Colorado area we have seen three tragic

8:16 suicides over the last few weeks and so there is a phenomenon called suicide clusters where kids who are already feeling kind of low and kind of hopeless about life once one suicide happens in another we do see it and this is around the country where where you start to see clusters because then kids sort of feel like maybe this is an okay way to deal with my stress or my hopelessness and so what I would say to

8:44 any parent who maybe in an area where there has been any kind of recent suicide talk to your kids talk to them openly about depression and suicide in any family history of depression or anybody else who has died by suicide and the family talked to them about it it is not going to put ideas into their heads I know it's a really common fear and I really do understand it however all of the research and my

9:11 experience says you you really don't put those kinds of thoughts into those kids heads they have already thinking about it they're already exposed to it but what you're doing is likely preventing anything from happening to them or giving them a space to connect with you or get them professional help thanks so much for listening I really hope that you will take what I had to say to heart there's not too many subjects that I care more about than this one right now

9:35 and again if you need any additional help there are mental health providers in every community there are hot suicide hotlines there are texts hotlines you also can reach out for help as a parent that says you know I need I need some extra support thanks so much