No One Saw My Pain: Why Teens Kill Themselves - Softcover

Garfinkel, Lili Frank

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393313921 ISBN 13: 9780393313925

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996

Synopsis

Compelling profiles reveal why teens kill themselves―the signs missed, the despair overlooked.

The book not only issues a warning but alerts concerned adults to signs of suicidal depression in adolescents.

There is always a moment of shock, or horror―and for any parent, of fear―when a teenager chooses suicide. How could this happen? Didn't his parents know he was so depressed? She was so pretty, such a high achiever―what went wrong?

Andrew Slaby, a psychiatrist specializing in depression and crisis intervention, and Lili Garfinkel, a parent educator, shed light on these perplexing questions. They present psychological profiles of eight severely depressed adolescents who either attempted or committed suicide. In reading the teens' journals and talking with their family and friends, they found that the severity of their distress was missed, not because people around them didn't care, but because they didn't know what to look for, what questions to ask, or how to respond effectively. In addition to sharing these families' stories, the authors offer guidelines for recognizing and working with suicidal youth. In alerting readers to the factors that may lead to suicide, this book will literally save lives.

About this title

About the Author

Andrew Slaby, M.D., practices in New York City.

Lili Frank Garfinkel lives in Minneapolis.

From Kirkus Reviews

Despite his book's misleading title, Slaby's experiences in counseling grieving parents raise important questions about why so many youths' cries for help go unanswered. More than 2,000 American teenagers kill themselves every year, and one in ten experiences some form of severe depression during the high school years. Slaby, a psychiatrist specializing in depression and crisis intervention, profiles seven families responding to the loss of a teenager and one case of failed suicide. Only in the last case do we have access to the child's feelings, and that discussion adds little to our general understanding because the child, from a born-again Christian family, could only insist that God had intervened to save his life when he tried to hang himself. So although Slaby purports to tell us ``why teens kill themselves,'' interviewing their parents and siblings tells us more about how families cope with their own pain. These physical and emotional reactions to loss range from isolation and denial to anger and blame. Some families become stronger in coping with their grief, others fall apart from the stress of self- accusation. Finally, in the section ``Working with Suicidal Youth,'' Slaby focuses on some of the reasons why our health care system, families, communities, and churches are sadly inadequate in responding to teenage depression. ``Almost half the teens who kill themselves,'' he writes, ``do so within three to six months of visiting their doctor for some vague medical reason.'' Few cries for help are followed up by doctors, teachers, suicide hotlines, or even the police. But it's not just the ``safety net'' that's failing. Slaby suggests that today's generation faces stresses- -divorce, drugs, violence, and economic instability--that bypassed previous generations, and these factors require a whole new set of coping strategies. ``Surviving Suicide'' would be a more apt, if less sensational, title for this casebook of eight families. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0393313921
• ISBN 13: 9780393313925
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 222