Children commit suicide to attract adults' attention

Two schoolgirls have recently hanged themselves in Russia's Yakutia republic. The two girls disappeared last week. Their dead bodies were found the following day in an abandoned barn. The girls wrote a suicide note where they explained their actions. One of the girls, 15, decided to commit suicide because of one way love. The other girl killed herself because of solidarity with her friend.

Photo: Children commit suicide to attract adults' attention

About 3,000 children commit suicide in Russia every year, Russian Public Organization Child’s Rights said. Russian children commit suicide by eating soporific pills, by cutting their veins, by jumping out of the windows and by hanging themselves.

Cases of suicide among children usually lead to huge public outrage. Even now a lot of people in Russia remember the tragedy that happened two years ago when three Russian girls jumped out of a window of an apartment block in the Moscow region.

In 2005 a 14-year-old schoolboy from St. Petersburg threw himself on the railway tracks, under a passing train. A note was found in his jacket. The teen boy complained of humiliating behavior from the side of his teacher, who regularly laughed at the child’s poor family in class.

Alla Avalova, a Russian psychologist, gave an interview to Pravda.ru about the main reasons that pushes children to commit suicide.

"The main reason of suicides among children is the lack of attention and care. Children can not live without parental love. Unfortunately, it often happens that children do not see enough love from their parents and feel useless. As a rule, children do not want to kill themselves. They just want to attract attention to themselves. Such suicides are committed so that they could be incidentally witnessed by someone," the psychologist said.

Alla Avalova said that child suicides can be quite contagious. One suicide may lead to another. Saddam Hussein’s execution led to an outburst of suicides committed in many countries of the Muslim world. After the broadcasting of the execution on TV several children from Yemen, Algeria, India and America died. They decided to play the game of Saddam's execution and died in a loop.

How can child suicide be prevented? In fact, everything depends on family, says Avalova. Sometimes parents do not see what happens to their children. Children may try to reach out to their parents to tell them about their problems, although in many cases parents say that they do not have time to listen to them. It is highly important to explain to a child that he or she is understood and that they can always find protection and support in their families.

Translated by Alexander Timoshik
Pravda.ru