Troubled Teens Resources

When a teenager slashes their wrist, they effectively wound the entire family.

“When a child attempts suicide, emotions hit families like a Mack truck…. matter how a family deals with the aftermath of a suicide, they are forever changed by it.”

What makes teen age suicide all the more difficult for the teen and their family to recover from is that often the suicide is unacknowledged, with the teen in denial and the family unwilling to push the matter back into the spotlight.

“Many families don’t pursue treatment because they deny or minimize their child’s suicide attempt. Teenagers who attempt suicide may also not admit they tried to kill themselves. “Even when you see a young person in the emergency room right after he or she completed an attempt, very quickly the denial kicks in,” Hoover says. “She may say, ‘I never meant it,’ or ‘it was an accident,’ or denying she even made an attempt. Families do the same thing because of the intensity of the suicide issue.”

Often a teen suicide is blamed on the teen’s drug abuse without an understanding of the underlaying emotional factors that precipitated both the drug abuse and the attempted suicide. When a teen commits suicide their emotional pain becomes a family affair. Though healing takes time, denial only prolongs it, making the entire family vulnerable and weakened.

“Once the child who attempted suicide learns how to deal with his or her hopelessness and depression, and the parents begin to deal with their own anxieties and guilty or angry feelings, then they may be ready for family therapy. Family therapy helps family members learn how to communicate better with each other and express their feelings more constructively.”

(Source)