Suicide does not happen suddenly, in fact, it is a long-term process. It would start with an event that changes someone’s life, for instance, bullying, family/friends loss, overwhelming pressure from school and society, putting up to unrealistic expectations, etc. As the stress builds up, teenagers would begin to face anxiety and eventually leads to depression, which is a mental illness. In addition, bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder are also mental illnesses that contribute to teen suicide. There are several cases where the cause of teens’ mental illnesses is the low levels of serotonin in the brain, which are usually genetics and are unexplained.
As mentioned before, suicidal teenagers are coping with severe depression, usually caused by bullying or after a trauma life experience, such as losing a loved one. Even though depression can be treated, the hardest part is to recognize someone, especially teens with depression. In some cases, there are symptoms that indicate like mood swings, loss of appetite, getting into the habit of using drugs, and so on. The problem is because teenagers are still growing, the above symptoms are often mistaken as hormones or a phase that young teens are going through. In other cases, the young adults who are suffering from depression show mild to no symptoms as they try to hide their feelings. Depression is a dangerously harmful disease. It attacks one emotionally first, then, as it worsen, physical pain will appear. However, due to the hecticness in our society, parents of young teens do not take time to notice the changes in their kids as much and sometimes, they let it be thinking it is a part of growing up. Without realizing it, lack of parents’ interests also result in making the issue more serious.