Broken Relationships

Loss of a Boyfriend or Girlfriend

Chronic health problems or long-term personal issues often trigger adult suicide attempts. Teenage suicide attempts are often triggered by problems in relationships; especially significant “break ups” or major disruptions in relationships with close friends or family members. When relationships end it can be very difficult, even under the best of circumstances, so when your teenager looses their boyfriend or girlfriend it can be very traumatic, especially if they have emotionally invested a lot of themselves in the relationship.

For many teenagers their relationship with their significant other is viewed as the “best thing that ever happened” to them. Consequently, when this relationship is lost you may need to treat it as such. This may be really hard to understand as an adult because so often we are tempted to see these relationships as “childish” or “just a phase.”

Parents of suicidal teenagers often overlook the loss of this kind of relationship. For some it is because the teenager has kept the relationship a secret. For others it is simply because parents often underestimate the power of these young relationships over their child. The answer to this problem is awareness. Parent getting and staying connected with their kids; parents earning the right to talk with their teenagers about their “love life” by meeting and loving their child as they are, listening well, and communicating a genuine sense of love and care that transcends the felt need to lecture and coerce.

Loss of Friends

Problems in school seem to be a pretty common theme with teenagers and suicide attempts; problems with grades and performance, of course, but perhaps more are their relationships with friends (White, 1999). As a parent you send your kids to school to get an education, but an education is only half of what they receive. Peer relationships are vital to your child’s development, however; as you may already know, teenage peer relationships can be very complicated. Social blunders often overlooked in the adult world are exploited by teenagers and used as a means of singling out certain individuals and targeting them for social punishment.

Time and again I have worked with teenagers who made a mistake, made someone else angry, or hurt a specific person’s feelings and subsequently were socially destroyed, targeted, attacked, and essentially “kicked out” of their group of friends. As a result many teenagers will begin to feel rejected, lonely, hopeless, and worthless.

Family Fights

A significant breach in the relationship between a parent and a child can be devastating at any age. Family fights are often the trigger of suicide attempts and need to be handled with care (White, 1999). May of the parents of suicidal teenagers I work with often appear surprised when I inform them that abuse (physical, emotional, and sexual) is often associated with suicide attempts. Perhaps this is due to the dramatic nature of abuse as a very “messy subject” and inability to cope with their child being abused. However, abuse, in all its forms, is often a trigger of suicidal thoughts and cannot be overlooked.

Also the loss of a significant family member, especially a parent, through death, divorce, or abandonment can be a major trigger. Many times teenagers (and children) will begin to think that they were the reason their parent is gone, blaming themselves for their situation in a manner in which they will begin to struggle with feelings of self-hatred and self-destruction.

Other triggers to be aware of:

Use and/or abuse of drugs and alcohol (some drugs can trigger this kind of stuff)

Feeling hopeless, alone, or alienated

Recent suicide of a friend, family, or role model

Legal problems

Moving

Failure

Access to a weapon (White, 1999)

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*** Any advice given on this website is offered in generic form. In other words, all of our site visitors have unique qualities that play a role in their personal mental health. We do not know you personally and can therefore not take into consideration these qualities when offering advice, and do not claim to do so. All information provided on this site is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between a patient/site visitor and his/her existing psychologist, mental health professional, teacher, or professor. ***

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Written by Joseph James, Psy.D.

REFERENCES

White, T. W. (1999). How to identify suicidal people: A systemic approach to risk assessment. The Charles Press Publishers, Inc., PA.