Understanding Youth Suicide
Posted on 02/11/2009 | 0 Comments
Today’s Los Angeles Times carried a front page local story regarding youth suicide in Palo Alto: "Palo Alto campus searches for healing after suicides”. Although details are sketchy and of course incomplete, the story points out that there has been a cluster of suicides involving students from the same school campus over a short period of time, occurring in the same place and under similar circumstances. As expected, such tragic events have caused substantive community consternation.
Youth suicide is a very emotional issue. It cuts to the very core of our families and our communities. It leaves scars in parents, siblings, grandparents, other family members, friends and many others. It elicits strong responses from individuals or from communities. Some of those responses are of grief – private and shared with only a few. Some of those responses are very public – it is not clear what motivates them or how these differ from the private responses. Some of these responses may be helpful – such as support and counseling from family and friends. Some of these responses may be harmful – such as bringing in grief counselors and creating community emotional contagion in the wake of a suicide. Some of these responses may be neither helpful nor harmful – but may be costly. So, what can be done?
Here the evidence is not fully in yet and each situation begs careful assessment and considered planning before anything is started. What is not helpful is putting into place those things we know do not work. What is likely not helpful is grief contagion. This can be created by mass grief counseling and enthusiastic and well meaning initiatives to “do something”. What may be useful is identifying young people who know the victims and addressing their mental health needs and emotional concerns. What may be useful is for the newspapers and television and radio stations to stop running front page stories and prime time news about youth suicide. This does not mean that we do not talk about it. This does not mean that we avoid the topic. Not at all! This means that we address this tragic and emotionally issue rationally and responsibly.
-Stan
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This is a great set of comments and rings very true.
I totally agree that scientists (just like everyone else) have their biases and foibles. After all, scientists are human beings too! But science is different than scientists.
The scientific method is the most objective frame that we have by which to evaluate and predict. Science is not about finding truth. It is only about being less wrong most of the time. The scientific method (experimental design and mathematics) gives us the ability to test what we believe. The scientific method is not used to prove something is correct, on the contrary, the scientific method is designed to prove that something is not correct! It is designed to test what is called the “null hypothesis”. It takes ideas that come out of left field (or wherever else they come from) and puts those ideas to an independent test.
t does not drive our beliefs. It does however challenge our beliefs. In that way it is self-correcting. Of course scientific inquiry and understanding lives within a wider social context. That is one of the great features of science.
But gravity is gravity, social context notwithstanding. And thus it is nasty, brutish and long. As Brecht said, (something like this) - the purpose of science is to save us from everlasting error.
By Christina Carew on May 11th
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