Current treatment for teens that struggle with mental disorders
and thoughts of suicide doesn't appear to be helping according
to a new study. Adolescents need a more intuitive treatment plan
and for the most part, that's not what they are getting. The
Harvard study found that around 1 in every 8 U.S. teens have
thought about suicide and nearly 1 in 25 either made plans to or
actually attempted suicide. Researchers collected data on
suicidal behaviors from 6,500 teenagers, aged 13 to 18. They
also had the teen's parents fill out questionnaires. Just over
12 percent of the teens said they had thought about suicide and
4 percent said they had created a plan or attempted suicide.
"What adults say is, the highest risk time for first starting to
think about suicide is in adolescence," said Matthew Nock, a
psychologist who worked on the study at Harvard University in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. Researchers found that almost all the
teens who had thought about or attempted suicide had a mental
disorder including, but