European Church" "
With some 1000 cases per year, suicide represents the second main cause of the death of young people between the ages of 15 and 20 in France, immediately after road accidents. To this tragedy the episcopal Committee for health has dedicated a pastoral reflection with the title “Prevention of Suicide in Adolescents”. It was published in 2001. But now the French bishops have decided to re-issue it on the occasion of the World Day of the sick which is celebrated throughout the world on 11th February. What concerns the French episcopate is especially the scale of the problem: the statistics show in fact that, again in youngsters between the ages of 15 and 20, the number of attempted suicides is ten times higher than that of actual suicides. Recourse to suicide is more frequent in boys than in girls, even if women make more attempts. To these figures however other forms of behaviour that may equally be called “suicidal” should be added: excessive speed on the roads, high-risk sports, drug consumption…. “The suicide of an adolescent – writes the Committee – is ambivalent, because the gesture that may lead to death may paradoxically proceed from over-high expectations of life”. Prevention – writes the Committee – must be based on a careful observation of the young, “attempting to decipher the signs of suffering and depression”. Here an important role may also be played by the parishes, the movements and the associations. From a spiritual point of view, what’s needed is to help the young to understand that “life must be accepted and lived in spite of all its sources of pain” and that “suffering is inseparable from the mystery of the human existence. This experience, which undoubtedly brings with it psychological scars, may nonetheless lead to accepting another kind of risk: that of having trust in life”.
