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在线翻译:
szdaily -> Opinion -> 
Curbing youth suicides
    2015-02-02  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

    Wu Guangqiang

    jw368@163.com

    ON Jan. 19, a 14-year-old girl jumped to her death from the 16th floor of a building under construction in Jizhou, Hebei Province.

    According to media reports, the tragedy happened when the girl was trying to help her father, a labor contractor, get his unpaid wages from his employer.

    On Jan. 12, a 23-year-old man and a 22-year-old woman were found lying dead in a tiny hotel room in Jinan, Shandong Province. Police said that they committed suicide by burning charcoal.

    The young man from Jiangsu Province and the young woman from Shandong Province came all the way from their respective hometowns to meet in Jinan to end their lives. Messages left on their mobile phones revealed that they felt so pessimistic and desperate that they chose to die together, though their heartbroken families were unable to find out the exact reason why the young couple took their lives.

    

    These young people’s sudden deaths were devastating blows to their families.

    These examples are just the latest cases of an ever-increasing adolescent suicide rate in China. In December alone of last year in Chengdu, capital city of Sichuan Province, local media reported several suicide cases. An 18-year-old girl ended her own life after she was swindled out of her money on the street. A woman in her early 20s jumped off a footbridge to her death. A student at the Southwest University of Political Science and Law committed suicide off campus.

    In Shenzhen, a megacity whose residents are exposed to intense competition and unprecedented life and work pressures, the rate of fatal and attempted suicides among young people is even higher.

    In a short period of time in 2010, as many as nine young workers jumped to their deaths at Foxconn’s Shenzhen factories. Foxconn, a Taiwanese multinational electronics contract manufacturing company, employs tens of thousands of workers in Shenzhen. The series of suicides stunned Shenzhen, arousing public concern about suicide among young people.

    Figures show that suicide has become the leading cause of death for people aged 18 to 34 in China, beating traffic accidents and illnesses. At least 250,000 young people in China commit suicide every year, six times more than those who are murdered.

    Couple these tragedies with the fact that most young people in China are the only children in their families, their unnatural deaths cause even greater trauma to their parents.

    A worldwide problem, teen suicide disturbs experts and authorities, who are trying to identify the causes and work out effective preventive measures. Many factors lead to suicide: parental divorce, domestic violence, feelings of worthlessness, rejection by friends or peers, etc. But the most common cause is depression or other psychological illnesses.

    According to experts, China has over 10 million youngsters with mental health problem, of whom half have attempted to take their own lives. Sixty percent of people who commit suicide in China have a history of mental illness.

    However, that means that 40 percent of fatal suicides were conducted by mentally healthy youths. Many youngsters, even children, end their own lives for what seem to adults as “trivial matters.” Sometimes, the suicide of a friend or someone he or she knows online can trigger another senseless suicide. Some like-minded teenagers even commit group suicides, or cluster suicides. Such tragedies that take place through a suicide pact pose a particularly grave challenge to families and society because no conventional measures can predict or prevent them.

    The use of online social media has precipitated the increase of teen suicide to some extent. Some pessimistic youngsters meet online to share gloomy ideas and discuss death, which they may think is the only solution to their anxieties or agonies even if they know little about the consequence of suicide. As a result, some teenagers take their lives as if it is a mere game.

    

    Joint efforts from parents, teachers and other members of society should work together to prevent youth suicide. Parents should watch closely for signs that show their children may attempt suicide because youngsters considering suicide often exhibit abnormal behaviors.

    The government must act now to put the matter on their agenda, allocating necessary resources toward the prevention of youth suicide.

    (The author is an English tutor and freelance writer.)

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