Whitman HS Suicide

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if she was taking any antidepressants. These are really dangerous for kids to take, but are still readily prescribed. It explains why she always seemed happy despite having depression. Antidepressants can make you appear to be happy even when you aren’t. In adolesant patients these drugs have been shown to increase suicidality. There are lots of reports of kids who attempted suicide and those who died by suicide while on antidepressants. Also the increasing rate at which they are prescribed for kids might account for why suicide rates have increased.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/health/us-suicide-rate-surges-to-a-30-year-high.html?referer=

https://www.google.com/amp/s/articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/02/15/amp/why-are-more-than-one-in-ten-americans-at-risk-for-suicide.https://www.google.com/amp/s/articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/02/15/amp/why-are-more-than-one-in-ten-americans-at-risk-for-suicide.aspx

No - there is lots of misinformation here and it's a much more complicated situation than this. SSRIs do not make you appear to be happy even when you aren't. It is also difficult to measure the number of suicides medication therapy has prevented. These are decisions to be made with a psychiatrist, not after reading an article by an Internet quack.

Really- I only posted two articles, but there's actually a ton of evidence that shows that how dangerous these meds are for kids. Drug companies admit to this and have black box warnings on these drugs that explicitly state they can cause suicidality for this age group. SSRI can mask moods. I know that because I've taken them. They can make you put on a smile while a school even when you feel like crap. Please don't listen to how dismissive this poster is. Parents do your own research. So many parents are carting their kids off to shrinks only to have them put on meds that make them go from depressed to suicidal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Tons of families are struggling.
And thinking they're the only one.

It is lonely when your child is struggling with mental illness. There is the lack of resources. But even worse is the fear that your child will self harm or worse when you are sleeping or in that hour between school and when you get home from work. Couple that with the judgment of other parents - telling you to just pay for services (it’s not a money issue, it’s a lack of resources), telling you to supervise (you need to sleep and work to pay the mortgage), making you feel inadequate while your heart is breaking for your child and your patience is wearing thin because of behavior that your child can’t control. It’s tough and lonely.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

the pressure to get into college...

Getting into college does not require AP classes.
The AP pressure is about "which" college.

And if you go to Frostburg you will completely be mocked.

You have proven my point. That is that the parents don't want to be THAT family whose teenager goes to Montgomery College. In the Whitman community they would have to sell their house and move.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

the pressure to get into college...

Getting into college does not require AP classes.
The AP pressure is about "which" college.

And if you go to Frostburg you will completely be mocked.

You have proven my point. That is that the parents don't want to be THAT family whose teenager goes to Montgomery College. In the Whitman community they would have to sell their house and move.

That's nonsense. I'd agree that many, probably most, people in the Whitman cluster hope their kids go to "more prestigious" schools than MC. But no one would move in shame if that is what transpired.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tons of families are struggling.
And thinking they're the only one.

It is lonely when your child is struggling with mental illness. There is the lack of resources. But even worse is the fear that your child will self harm or worse when you are sleeping or in that hour between school and when you get home from work. Couple that with the judgment of other parents - telling you to just pay for services (it’s not a money issue, it’s a lack of resources), telling you to supervise (you need to sleep and work to pay the mortgage), making you feel inadequate while your heart is breaking for your child and your patience is wearing thin because of behavior that your child can’t control. It’s tough and lonely.

It's so hard. If only there was a safe place to find direction and support. There's nothing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

the pressure to get into college...

Getting into college does not require AP classes.
The AP pressure is about "which" college.

And if you go to Frostburg you will completely be mocked.

You have proven my point. That is that the parents don't want to be THAT family whose teenager goes to Montgomery College. In the Whitman community they would have to sell their house and move.

That's nonsense. I'd agree that many, probably most, people in the Whitman cluster hope their kids go to "more prestigious" schools than MC. But no one would move in shame if that is what transpired.

Plenty of Whitman kids go to Montgomery College. It's a good option to have if your kid is not ready for a 4 year school or you want to save money by having them start there and transfer. I think a lot of the people posting here were the same ones who absolutely gloried in the fact that Whitman's great schools ranking went down to 4 for a year--there was a long DCUM thread about this, and the venom and assumptions were disturbing. I highly doubt many of these people have actual experience with the school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

the pressure to get into college...

Getting into college does not require AP classes.
The AP pressure is about "which" college.

And if you go to Frostburg you will completely be mocked.

You have proven my point. That is that the parents don't want to be THAT family whose teenager goes to Montgomery College. In the Whitman community they would have to sell their house and move.

That’s ridiculous. Kids go to MC and more and more are gong to UMD.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a crisis in teenage mental health that has reached epidemic proportions. So many girls, especially, trying to show how popular they are do not realize the impact on others.

It’s not just popularity/bullying.

The academic pressure from parents is immense and is the cause of guilt, anxiety, and low self-esteem at anything less than perfection.

Please stop blaming parents. School pressure is one of many possible reasons a child commits suicide.

This was a real person with local family. Stop speculating on something you know nothing about.

Hello, Actually everyone should be asking,
What could have been different?

Anyone?

[Anonymous]

Although I eventually shifted my grad work and PhD to another area of epidemiology, I did do quite a bit of work on suicide my first year of grad, and follow much of the scholarship on suicide.

The simple fact is that we have no idea how many suicides there are due to huge systemic undercurrents via misclassification as accidental.

What the scholarship shows is that if you shoot yourself with firearm or hang yourself and you will virtually always be properly tabulated as suicide. Use another form of self caused death, even one associated with suicide, and absent clear evidence you intended suicide you much more likely to be ruled by an ME or coroner as accidental death or death by misadventure. The science has illustrated this in changes in Australia after the mid 1990's broad reduction in firearms there. For about a decade they were certain this reduced suicide and now know it did not.While gun suicide decreased, not only did suicide by other means and ruled as suicide increase, but more importantly there was a sharp and sustained increase in accidental self caused death by other means, but ruled as accidental. The net decrease was fully substituted by other means, they just increased their error rate via increased misclassification of suicide deaths as accidental.

In short we have no idea what suicide rates truly are. And it is advisable to be very suspect of comparative rates across countries, regions within countries or any age and demographic cohort.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My daughter is a freshman at whitman and tells me things very similar to the person at 22:31. School starts so early, they have so much work, psat nonsense and pressure start freshman year. Ive already told mine if she feels its too much she can step back and we will find alternatives for her. I don’t understand why this pressure is put on teenagers and can’t imagine how the stress is affecting their growth and development. I understand Jojo had other challenges beyond high school but in general Whitman does not seem a healthy place for young people.

The pressure at Whitman starts with the parents. They are so busy keeping up with the neighbors in the status race that that they don't look around to realize this. They are so eager to have their children succeed that they insist that the academic load be unmanigable. There is no other school in this county where the pressure is like this. I am very familiar with what goes on inside Quince Orchard, Northwest, and Poolesville. The kids there have normal teenage lives and their grades are not the life or death of them.

For the love of God Whitman parents calm down and lay off your kids. It does not matter if they go to Frostburg or Harvard. They will be fine wherever they end up.

Again - irreverent ! Stop posting this sanctimonious crap.

I tend to agree. Kids are actually under less pressure than ever. They are just conditioned to be less and less resilient and thereby just feel more pressure and stress because of their expectations and the advocacy of transference to this being the fault of the school/parents/society-at-large. They constantly get the message and that nothing is their fault or their problem. There are kids all over the world under much MORE stress and pressure than Americans kids., Spend some time at a school in Asia to see.

. I teach my kids to be resilient, to cope, to see problems they encounter as problems they must solve. it is amazing how many harmful messages including the first two of the three quoted above are out there.

Look at this:

I went to Whitman last year. I started the year happy, but with a diagnosed anxiety disorder and clinical depression. The school triggered a horrible mental breakdown for me. The pressure was never ending and I didn’t know how to fit in. I tried to kill myself 6 weeks into the school year, and thank god I survived. I went to a hospital program for a month, then did school from home through MCPS home and hospital. I now attend a therapeutic school, but I still suffer the damage and Still struggle with suicidal thoughts and self destructive behavior.

I felt like no one wanted to help me, at one point I had dropped all but 2 classes and spent most of the day in the library or goodwins office sobbing and begging to go home. I couldn’t handle so many people, so many assignments, it was horrible for me.

I didn’t know JoJo. But she was so loved, she was amazing. It breaks and shatters my heart to think of her feeling the way I felt, the desperation, the despair. No one deserves to die that way.

Please, protect your children. It’s so easy to be damaged so quickly in irreversible ways.

Notice everyting is a projection of this being an external issue? "The school triggered" "be damaged," etc.

Our ancestors, and I don't mean just prehistoric, but really until very recently, as children, saw siblings die, experienced both low level personal violence (getting in a physical fight), and saw high level personal violence. They wondered if they would eat when hungry, lived in societies with no freedoms, and had to work a lot more[i] than kids today.

Kids today are taught to blame all things on external factors, and to expect intervention. Delaying real life experience, delaying the real difficulties in life is more harmful in my opinion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My daughter is a freshman at whitman and tells me things very similar to the person at 22:31. School starts so early, they have so much work, psat nonsense and pressure start freshman year. Ive already told mine if she feels its too much she can step back and we will find alternatives for her. I don’t understand why this pressure is put on teenagers and can’t imagine how the stress is affecting their growth and development. I understand Jojo had other challenges beyond high school but in general Whitman does not seem a healthy place for young people.

The pressure at Whitman starts with the parents. They are so busy keeping up with the neighbors in the status race that that they don't look around to realize this. They are so eager to have their children succeed that they insist that the academic load be unmanigable. There is no other school in this county where the pressure is like this. I am very familiar with what goes on inside Quince Orchard, Northwest, and Poolesville. The kids there have normal teenage lives and their grades are not the life or death of them.

For the love of God Whitman parents calm down and lay off your kids. It does not matter if they go to Frostburg or Harvard. They will be fine wherever they end up.

Again - irreverent ! Stop posting this sanctimonious crap.

I tend to agree. Kids are actually under less pressure than ever. They are just conditioned to be less and less resilient and thereby just feel more pressure and stress because of their expectations and the advocacy of transference to this being the fault of the school/parents/society-at-large. They constantly get the message and that nothing is their fault or their problem. There are kids all over the world under much MORE stress and pressure than Americans kids., Spend some time at a school in Asia to see.

. I teach my kids to be resilient, to cope, to see problems they encounter as problems they must solve. it is amazing how many harmful messages including the first two of the three quoted above are out there.

Look at this:

I went to Whitman last year. I started the year happy, but with a diagnosed anxiety disorder and clinical depression. The school triggered a horrible mental breakdown for me. The pressure was never ending and I didn’t know how to fit in. I tried to kill myself 6 weeks into the school year, and thank god I survived. I went to a hospital program for a month, then did school from home through MCPS home and hospital. I now attend a therapeutic school, but I still suffer the damage and Still struggle with suicidal thoughts and self destructive behavior.

I felt like no one wanted to help me, at one point I had dropped all but 2 classes and spent most of the day in the library or goodwins office sobbing and begging to go home. I couldn’t handle so many people, so many assignments, it was horrible for me.

I didn’t know JoJo. But she was so loved, she was amazing. It breaks and shatters my heart to think of her feeling the way I felt, the desperation, the despair. No one deserves to die that way.

Please, protect your children. It’s so easy to be damaged so quickly in irreversible ways.

Notice everyting is a projection of this being an external issue? "The school triggered" "be damaged," etc.

Our ancestors, and I don't mean just prehistoric, but really until very recently, as children, saw siblings die, experienced both low level personal violence (getting in a physical fight), and saw high level personal violence. They wondered if they would eat when hungry, lived in societies with no freedoms, and had to work a lot more[i] than kids today.

Kids today are taught to blame all things on external factors, and to expect intervention. Delaying real life experience, delaying the real difficulties in life is more harmful in my opinion.

Our ancestors experienced external factors which caused misery and suffering. The misery and suffering I and many others experienced in high school and college which lead to depression is a culture where individual achievement is valued above community, where people are unconnected to each other in meaningful ways, and status/money/intelligence is the currency. This culture can make one feel alone, especially if the love of the parent is viewed as conditional.

[Anonymous]

7:11 is a perfect example of a problem.

There are so many problems with this person I don't even know where to start so I won't.

To all the teens reading this thread, I am sure, in your own life you have met this person. While she boasts about her "resilience" her intent is to gaslight you. She is trying to invalidate your experience. She is blaming you... Aka "lack of resilience".

It's typical coming from a generation who brag that they "work hard play hard". This generation did copious amounts of cocaine and have crashed the economy twice.

This person is the opposite of a role model. She has a chronic case of lack of compassion. She chases materialism straight to hell.

You can't change a person like this though they will try to change you or control you with criticism. Do you have somebody in your life that tries to control you with criticism? That person is toxic. Learn good boundaries and stay very, very, very, very far from somebody like this.

Not everybody is going to agree that we need to stop being so hard charging like a mob stampeding over top of other classmates on our way to a top college. Hey my kid was fine.

You will not change this person, you need to just stay away from them.

[Anonymous]

I have no idea about the theory of modern society contributing to teen's lack of resilience, but I will say that when I was depressed (not as a teen), I was sure my depression was caused by a particular situation I was dealing with at that time. The same situation persisted after I recovered, and seemed perfectly manageable. I also felt like my friends were neglecting me at the time, but afterward I realized that I hadn't been seeing the situation clearly. No one knew I was depressed, and I had drawn away from people close to me.

This is not to say that schools and communities can't to more to recognize the signs and offer help to kids who are struggling, but it's important to realize that most people are mis-perceiving reality at least to some extent when they are depressed. And depression hits teens harder both because they are subject to fluxuating hormones and because they don't have the years of experience necessary to understand that you can work through tough situations and find your self ok on the other side.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sorry for your experience, and I know that's not enough. Wouldn't it be nice if therapists in this area would volunteer their time in our own schools to help within the community? That would be one way of starting to address the problem, this school, and I'm sure many others, just want to chase the problem away. One less thing to deal with I guess. So sad.

Therapist here. I take insurance which means I make a fraction of what those who get OOP make and I do it because I like working with diverse (soci0economic and culturally) clientele and I can afford to do it. What I cannot afford to do in addition to this is volunteer. I spend my free time battling insurance companies that don't want to pay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The kid who made the petition is trying to help out. There is a lot of help at schools but there is never enough help.

This is a competitive lot. In our society true compassion is lacking. Suicide by a rich privileged student is not on anyone's radar what with other issues that our society is facing. This will blow over in a week's time.

Hope the kid who made the petition is doing it for the right reasons and not for their college essays.
#Cynical