How to resist adolescent suicides? Instructions for parents

Last week, many regional departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia have a new occupation - to refute rumors about the preparatory shares of teenage suicides. Residents of the regions from the Kuban to Yakutia received an alarming text in messengers and SMS with reference to the police on the preparation of suicide of five thousand schoolchildren, organized by a certain group of KIT. The police did not confirm the newsletter and is now looking for a source of the throwing. Upon coincidence, at the same time, the governments of several regions adopted or discussed (with the involvement of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB, Roskomnadzor, the Ministry of Education) of the Anti -Destructive Communities on the Internet. The reasons in each case were called different. Emergency meetings were held in schools, where, in particular, they recommended parents to check the pages of schoolchildren in social networks.

Do the parents of adolescents need to worry about the existence of "death groups" on the Internet? How to respond to excitement around them? Do I need to follow the advice of the school administration? How to talk with a child about suicides and, most importantly, how to competently help a teenager in a difficult situation? Republic talked about this with four experts:

• Head of the Department of Suicidology of the Moscow Research Institute of Psychiatry Evgeny Lyuga,
• crisis teenage psychologist Irina Alekseeva,
• Criminologist-Suycidologist Yakov Gilinsky,
• Religi Revolution Stanislav Panin.

All experts are unanimous: the problem of suicidal groups on social networks is greatly exaggerated. The participation of adolescents in such groups is not a cause of suicide and not a greater risk factor than any everyday communication. Bans of activity in social networks or surveillance will rather aggravate problems - they will worsen relations in the family and strike a teenager’s self -esteem, experts agree with each other.

What then is the cause of suicidal behavior and what to do to prevent it? Here, specialists of different schools diverge. Russian psychiatry is looking for a root cause in the child himself, in his personal tendency to depression due to genes or acquired features. According to this theory, such adolescents are often unable to withstand typical life stress, they develop depression and thoughts about suicide.

Sociology and modern crisis psychology, on the contrary, proceed from the presumption of the normality of any person, and see the problem in excessive pressure on him of family and school.

We asked representatives of both schools to formulate the main advice to parents and tell about their typical mistakes.

Irina Alekseeva, Director of the Crisis Psychological Assistance Fund for Children and Teenagers "New Steps"

Error 1. "As I say, it will be"

Parents and others often talk about the surprise of suicide, but in fact, in most cases, characteristic features are observed. These are changes in the behavior of the child, changing mood, activity, appetite, increasing the level of anxiety. A child may be disturbed in a child, he can isolate himself from familiar affairs, contacts, becomes closed, can begin to talk about death. In such cases, you need to pay more attention to the child, talk more about what excites and bothers him. And if such changes last at least some long, you should contact specialists-psychologists, psychiatrists.

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