Suicide – It’s not one thing

School Report: What’s hard about growing up in New Zealand?
Stuff co.nz 28 June 2016
Family First Comment: “Bullying” was mentioned 46 times. But there were countless other terms that came up more frequently. “School” came up 287 times, “health” 273, “family” 269, “mother” 201 and “care” 177. “Work”, “alcohol”, “depression” and “counselling” all outstripped “bullying” in these reports.

Adolescence isn’t a life stage many would choose to repeat.
For a small, but sadly significant proportion of young people, it can all get too much.
Young people (aged 15 to 24) accounted for a third of all intentional self-harm hospitalisations in 2012.
Figures are not easily comparable, but New Zealand’s rate of youth suicide appears to be among the highest in the developed world.
How does it come to this?
As part of the School Report series, we set out to examine the hardest things about growing up in New Zealand.
We figured bullying would be the biggest problem. So we asked the Coroner’s office to give us every report of a child’s death (under 18-years-old) since 2010 where the word “bullying” appeared.
There were 30.
When we analysed the reports, we were taken by surprise.
“Bullying” was mentioned 46 times. But there were countless other terms that came up more frequently.
“School” came up 287 times, “health” 273, “family” 269, “mother” 201 and “care” 177.
“Work”, “alcohol”, “depression” and “counselling” all outstripped “bullying” in these reports.
These were a mixture of coroners’ words and those of the friends and families who spoke or wrote submissions on the 30 teenagers.
Our rudimentary word count is not a scientific finding. But it does show how a complicated web of things can make life feel too much for some teenagers.
READ MORE: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/80871180/school-report-whats-hard-about-growing-up-in-new-zealand