This is London
The true scale of a suicide epidemic among young people in a small town was revealed yesterday. As well as the seven deaths linked to social networking websites, a coroner revealed that a further six had also died within a year. The astonishing rate of hangings in Bridgend, South Wales, has terrified parents in the area and one secondary school has been placed on ‘suicide watch’ after pupils appealed for help. Of the seven “internet” suicides which culminated in the death last week of 17-year-old Natasha Randall, each victim was known by at least one of the others. Although the six other deaths revealed by coroner Philip Walters are believed to be isolated incidents, he said they show that the problem is even more widespread than originally feared. “There are 12 young men and one young woman involved and all were found hanged in the area in the last year.” One of the other victims, James Knight, 26, hanged himself from a belt during a heavy drinking session after a painful break-up with his girlfriend.
Leah Phillips was moments away from death when her stepfather found her hanging by a rope from the banister of their home near Bridgend the day after her 17-year-old friend Natasha died. Now senior staff at her school have announced the creation of an “anti-suicide taskforce” after 12 of her fellow students made a plea for help. Tina Phillips, 40, said: “I am shocked that 12 children have come forward – it’s astonishing. You don’t realise how depressed these children are. “It is definitely a good idea for the school to be on suicide watch.
I am curious to know what part “social networking’ played in this. Also I found it strange that this is in the entertainment section.
That’s what the Human Gene pool needs. A little bit of bleach now and then.
Wow, I guess teenagers really will jump of a bridge if all their friends do it too.
This will become worse as the world gets more and more fucked-up. Like lemmings killing themselves off.
Youth is wasted on the young.
Who cares. If they think that little of life, then be gone. Natural selection, if you ask me.
Empty lives, the result of the reduction of all culture to the lowest common denominator – but even more due to a society that presents developing adults with nothing but crass consumerism and materialism.
Kids are not encouraged or assisted in developing any interests or goals that don’t put money in someone’s pocket. There’s no meaning to their lives except as consuming units on some economic balance sheet.
Most people who hang themselves die a grueling death. This type of suicide pack is nothing new for society. In fact it happens in Japan, USA, Russia and South America. Everyone wants to be a perpetrator or a victim. And it appears so some want to be both at the same time. I think if they showed some hanging video where someone didn’t die right away from breaking their neck, but instead dangled around for that biological gasp of breath; our ancestral cries …some would thing twice.
damn you got it all wrong…
you think their all dumb??
get real! how about the emptyness of their education?? preparing them for a career that will be replaced by someone in a another/from another country that is cheaper to pay…
a system that puts their life at the long term in the hands of those that think only in the short term.
Right now i can really put into words what really needs to be said about this.. this is a situation that is played out over the world in developed coutnries.
#5, gq,
Who cares. If they think that little of life, then be gone. Natural selection, if you ask me.
Typical rambling of an asshole.
These children are ill. Maybe in your idea of a perfect world are the ill tossed onto some huge waste heap thus freeing up more health care resources for you. Teens have been committing suicide since our ancestors learned to walk upright. Why? I can’t answer, there is a different reason for each case. They in turn, deserve as much right to medical help as someone with a heart ailment or diabetes.
No, I don’t think there is an epidemic. This is only getting attention because society doesn’t want to hear about teen suicides and so doesn’t believe it happens.
What’s up with living in Bridgend?
Is life so bad there that the “youth” see no way out? (By the way – to put this in perspective, this suicide rate for Bridgend puts it somewhere in between Japan and Russia per capita. Unfortunately not that unusual.)
Not to be a bigger dork than I am, but some of these suicides may well be accidental deaths.
Some kids get their kicks mastubating while they choke themselves with a belt and sometimes pass out before they remove the belt and die. Sounds kooky but it’s real, they even a name for it which eludes me.
This is a coal mining town in Wales, not West fucking L.A. Those kids are not big-city kinks.
…So, you think only kids in big cities do whack shit?…
…doesn’t make it any less tragic, just means it was an accident, not a suicide…
Comment of the day from the article page.
“I grew up in Bridgend. It was a miserable, cold, violent and unpleasant town, which has since gone downhill.” – G, London, UK
I know this isn’t a laughing matter but I did chuckle when I read that.
These suicide pacts have been a common feature in Japan in recent years. It boils down to a difficult to approach fact; modern society is poisonous to the human spirit. People are designed to be social, spiritual and intellectual creatures, and much of our deeper urges drive us to fulfill these needs. But modern, western society isolates us from each other and from nature, with the emphasis on wealth over personality, superficiality over talent, and ‘stuff’ over reality. It does this while leaving intellects fallow through systemic education that rarely approaches the level of exploration of the world that young people should experience as they mature. And then, as if to further insult our nature, it tells us that spirituality is something your experience in a nice compartmentalized box with a bell on top, just like the nice compartment where you keep your family and the nice compartment where you do your work. No one is on the same schedule, no one has time to even say hello. Couples have sex once a week, in between days of working without seeing each other.
It all leaves a person kind of worn out. Some people manage to claw out some area in their lives for friends and for self, but always at a big hit to what this society considers important; that bottom line. But to those that don’t, that can’t? Well, I can’t imagine a greater warning sign for a society than a large part of the population having a desire to die to leave it. Social networking might indeed increase the chances of this, as people are social creatures, and it’s easier to give up as a group than to give up alone, but it’s not the cause. No, the cause is much deeper, and until we begin to measure our success as a society by the happiness that we enjoy rather than by the dollars that we spend, it will only get worse.
If you don’t grasp the very very big difference between coal miner’s kids in Wales, lower middle-class country kids, not sexually precocious or sophisticated – and the kids who live in sex & media-saturated urban America, who have access to and are immersed in a culture saturated with sex, then I shudder to imagine what kind of understanding you have of anything. Just take my word for it. Life there is nothing like the life you’re familiar with. They don’t know about kinky masturbation practices. Their level of awareness is about that of American kids 30 years ago. They watch music videos and listen to the shit that get piped in from the “civilized” world outside (as evinced by the innocent, idiotic mimicking of ghetto criminals’ hand gestures in that one picture there) and that’s it. They don’t go through metal detectors at school because they don’t carry weapons, and they don’t know anyone who does. Compared to big-city American kids of their ages, they’re more like the Amish.
You need to travel some. Learn that there’s a great big world outside of what’s around you, and it’s a lot different than TV leads you to assume. Life in Wales can be pretty bleak for some.
These kids are obviously killing themselves because they think life is a dead end. Because the only parts of modern life that touch their lives are the ones that want their money. And no one has shown them any alternatives to a future of nothing but more shit.
There’s some copycatting going on, but the idea of giving up has to already be in many, many kids minds for even this small number to actually act on it.
my last, there, was of course directed at TatooYou @13 & 14…
Sadness. In this small blog out in the cloud I think that THC in #17 and Li in #16 hit it right on the head. Bridgend really could be anywhere in the western world and those kids could be anyone’s kids. Too many kids growing up with too much loneliness and not enough future. Too many parents so caught up in themselves and their worlds to notice.
I’m going to give my kids an extra hug tonight.
SO, other than Li, who else has anything to add regarding the question McCullough asks about social networking and what part it played ?
My 2 cents : If it mirrors the type of networks used by more “sophistcated” (THCs’ post) users, such as MySpace, YouTube et al..then I’d say there is a distinct possiblity those kids were aware of many things kids living in fucking LA know how to do. It is after all a networked world so, unless they truly are Amish, I wouldn’t discount what they have been exposed to within their social group.
I think the group and it’s health are outgrowths of what they see about the future and it’s sad if this was their only view.
I’ll be interested to see what their responses consist of when they are counseled.
When you see even a portion of the potential future make a decision to stop..I dunno folks..I’m just certain it ain’t a good thing for those of us to pick up the pieces.
Wanna hear something bizzarely coincidental ? My youngest sons’ 20 year old film school accepted candidate did the same thing 2 days ago.
Those who posted so callously really need to go homeless and alone for a few years.
There is no evidence==NO EVIDENCE==as to what has caused this localized event.
So–theorize all you want, but it is only guessing. Several of the suicides were unconnected to others. Probably some in depth psychological detective work might find the “cause” but the dude that hung himself a few months before supposedly getting married is an interesting supposition.
All guys except one girl? Wonder if she was a double X gene? Maybe the Welsh are genetically predisposed to kill themselves? 3HC—whaddyathink?
Bobbo –
Surprise ! I’m still online..
I said only what *I think* may have been responsible or at least contributed.
Does anyone have concrete evidence to explain suicide?
I’m certain studies have been done, although I’ve never been exposed to any.
#17….these kids may not be street wise in the same sense American city kids are, but they aren’t 30 years behind the world. The only difference between them and kids from London is the lack of places to hang out and the lack of diversity of race/ethnicity.
We have a tendancy to blame group think when confronted with this sort of thing. We can’t imagine that kids could think of ending it all on their own. So Myspace and all the other sites get the blame, just like Hard Rock/Heavy Metal was blamed 25 years ago and violent video games 15 years ago. Instead of trying to remember just what a bitch being a teenager can be for many kids, adults reach for the easy suspect. All that can be done is to keep your eye’s open for changes in behavior and hope you can intervene in time.
Or, it could be………..the mere fact of living in the Britain of New Labour and knowing it will be almost 4 years before you get out of it. 🙂
“Maybe the Welsh are genetically predisposed to kill themselves? 3HC—whaddyathink?”
What I think, bobbo, is that coal miners are predisposed to live miserable, difficult lives in which drunkenness, fistfights, thankless labor and early deaths figure prominently. I also have the temerity to suggest that in cold, wet, isolated Wales, that life in a coal mining town is already bleak and miserable from the git-go and that if I were growing up in one, that I also wouldn’t feel that life was all that important to hold on to, when you see every day what that life is likely to turn out like. And young primates, including humans, will often not act on impulses until a member of their peer group does, whereupon the dam breaks and most who had been considering such actions feel justified in going ahead.
But WTF does an illiterate racist idiot like me know, anyway?
2–DeLema==glad you are still on line, if being on line is what you want to do? THIS IS afterall, a social networking group. Maybe Mr. Mustard off’ed himself because nobody would agree with his definition of religion? Yes, that kind of rejection can be awful tough on a guy.
I read your post #20 as well. Is it “thinking” to just offer a supposition with no facts at all to back it up==just coincidents?
Suicide/living is a multi-factorial proposition. Identify 2-3-4 valid correct variables, and you still have an unknown number of unknowns left to go. With Ireland not being able to export Hagis to GOUSA, maybe they just found out their schools had scored a truck load for lunch next week?
#24–3HC==well its worse than you think==I agree completely with your post.
bobbo me lad, I wouldn’t wanna be in your shoes, should you go ’round suggestin’ that any self-respecting Irishman on this planet would be caught dead eatin’ that horror the heathen Scots dreamt up… 🙂
If they have the internet, they are aware of everything. To pretend otherwise is to put your head in the sand. We are entering an age of internet culture, with YouTube and MySpace being far more influential than television and movies. You can bet they’re camming and hooking up with each other. There are parents here who also believe their precious angels aren’t doing the same things.
27–3HC==thanks for the correction–I got it half wrong. I have seen Hagis on the menu at an otherwise fine restaurant in the West of Ireland near Sandspit I believe. But there is another cultural artifact==protein is protein afterall and that “Bizarre Food” guy and I think Anthony Bourdaine as well both ate it like it was sausage. Some lungs taste pretty good after you get the bras off.
Ecch ! After 40, leave the bra on !
– bobbo –
I suppose I was just generalising what I *think* must take place in those kids’ minds as a way of coming to grips with my own personal bewilderment at the suicide of my sons’ friend. TMI, perhaps but,he walked out into a slight snow storm after the pick-up truck he stole got stuck in a snow bank or bank of snow for those of you with more proper English wishes. Succintly, he choose to freeze to death in our below zero weather. I’m simply, terrified at my lack of knowledge and worried for my son. Sorry for my lack of substantiation, I truly have none and just as truly wish I did.