NEW ZEALAND

Easy life 'risks youth suicide'

Wellington's coroner has pointed the finger at an over-protective society and parents for trends in youth suicide.

Garry Evans said New Zealand's over-protective society, which had removed failure and competition from childhood experience, was partly to blame for the trend of teenagers as young as 14 and 15 committing suicide after breaking up with their boyfriend or girlfriend.

"Are our attempts these days to protect our children and young people against life's failures and traumatic events having a counter-productive effect in that they are not being inoculated against failure by exposure? If children are never allowed to fail, how will they learn to pick themselves up and walk on when they do fall?"

Mr Evans said that without the life experience to enable them to deal with a break-up, young people did not know who to turn to. "Are we over-protecting our children and young people? Where does the balance lie?"

New Zealand has one of the worst youth suicide rates in the developed world. The highest rate in 2002 was in young people aged 20 to 24.

Celia Lashlie, leader of the Good Man Project, agreed that children, particularly in the middle classes, were being raised with a "lack of resilience".

"Everything is being done for them. They are delivered to school and picked up from school. The greater the income of the parents, the greater the level of doing it for the kids," Ms Lashlie said.

But Canterbury suicide project leader Annette Beautrais said it was exceedingly rare for young teenagers to take their own lives. Young people aged under 15 had the lowest suicide rate of all age groups but Ms Beautrais said her research showed the numbers were increasing.

Wellington Medical School professor of psychiatric medicine Peter Ellis said it was difficult to assess whether young people were gaining more or less "coping experience" than in the past.

The health curriculum, which was introduced some years ago, should have improved the situation, helping young people to identify problems and know where to find help.

7 February 2006

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10367113

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