Teen Suicide and Depression: Speech

This country is phased with many problems. We all know that. Many of these problems are caused by and are affecting us, adults, the current generation. Problems such as pollution, global warming and the Economic and Financial crises.

And of course, the next generation are also facing these problems. Problems that we have caused. But they also have their own problems though.

A person’s teenage years have been referred to as the ‘Social years’ of one’s life. This is the time when they are the most ‘out there’. They meet new people, they get to know the world, and they also learn.

For many teenagers, this period of exams, sociability and learning can be extremely stressful. And 34% of teenagers globally suffer from some kind of depression throughout their teen years. 34%. That’s 1 in 3.

And I think there is a relationship between those two facts. And I’m right. Stress is one of the leading causes of depression. And stress is easily at its most abundant in people between 13 and 19.

These people are very young, and we are making them cope with more stress than most adults ever will or have had to deal with. And it’s taking its toll.

As I said, 1 in 3 teenagers will suffer from some sort of depression. Well here’s another fact; 100,000 teenagers also commit suicide each year. That’s one teen suicide every 40 seconds.

Bam! A child just killed himself. He might have had a loving family, friends, a good social life. He might have been about to get his school grades, they could have been outstanding!

But he could have been alone. He could be an orphan. Maybe he didn’t have any friends. Perhaps he thought; ‘There’s no one there for me. I need help, but I don’t have it. What’s the point of living?’

Either way, he was probably suffering from some sort of depression, and he hadn’t told anyone about it. He could have told his family, friends, a counselor. But he didn’t, and he ended his young life.

Well there’s the problem. People have lost hope. There is someone for everyone. In every realm of life. As the population grows, the amount of compassionate people grows. They’ll be more people identifying problems and attempting to solve them.

And of course, people have already tried to counter suicide and depression. They’ve found their target group to help, teenagers, and they’ve set up counselors in every school that can accommodate one.

So we know that there are people suffering, and we know that there are people who can help, but do the people suffering know that there is help available to them? No. And if they do, they are so depressed and obsessed with their problems that they don’t seek the support they know they could easily have.

Bam! Another child just killed themself. Let’s have a girl this time. Because the rate of suicide in females is growing too. 16 girls commit suicide a day.

And all these children need help. They need you! They need me! They need us! Together we can help them, together we can fight! We can fight for their problems, we can do our bit to fight for the next generation!

Teen Suicide and Depression

You're not Alone

It was an unforgettable scene. He sat against the wall. Head in his young hands, hunched over. Surrounded by grey, everywhere. The rasp of his deep breaths echoed through the empty air. But to him, the air was a poison. Every day it got worse. There was no sense to it anymore. The safety clicked off. One thing was certain; He wasn’t alone.

A person commits suicide 40 seconds. That adds up to 1 million suicides each year globally.

The pink wallpaper hadn’t shone through the mass of photos for years. The family at the beach. The family skiing. The family gathered for the father’s birthday. The girl sat on her bed, staring up at them all. The tear welled and fell. Her mother called her to dinner. Instead she turned her head down to the knife poised at her wrist.

100,000 teens commit suicide every year. And the female suicide rate is growing.

Martin walked along the school corridor, alone. He felt like the only person there, although chatting students lined the walls. He walked up to his locker and opened the door, peering at his reflection in the mirror. How ugly he was. His mother had always said that he was the most handsome boy on Earth, and he had believed her. But recently, he hadn’t really been in touch with his mother. She had died in a car crash a few years ago, and he’d never felt the same since. The familiar punch in the arm tore him back to reality. He stayed still, eyes focused on his reflection. “Morning ugly! ”The thug jeered. “How are you today fat faggot?” “Just leave me alone”, Martin muttered in response. The bell rang, but as he started to move towards his classroom, the thug give him a big shove, and he and all his papers went cascading down to the floor. The corridor was empty by the time he had gathered them all.

Bullying and Cyber-Bullying are some of the largest causes of teen depression.

“Late” said the teacher standing by her desk. Martin trudged over to his desk and slumped into the chair. “So as I was just saying, I will now hand back your results from the unit test last week, which remember, counts towards your final semester grade. Most of you did very well, although there were a few exceptions”. A few people swung around in their chairs to look at Martin. They all knew that he was the dumbest in the class. The teacher proceeded around the classroom, handing out the papers. When she reached Martins desk, she handed back his results without comment. F, read the paper, circled in bold red pen. Nothing was ever going right in his life. What was the point of living?

1 in 4 people will suffer from Mental Illnesses in the course of a year.

The counselor sat back in her chair in triumph and content. She always loved the feeling of helping someone. She’d been devoted to helping combat depression and teen issues since a close high school friend had attempted suicide, primarily influenced by depression. She looked up as the boy entered the room. It was the boy she had saved from deep depression. He had been close to losing it before he discovered her. It was so sad that people didn’t think that there was anyone there for them. “Hello Martin”, she said.

34% of Teenagers suffer from some sort of depression at some point.

The photos on the wall stared down over the family huddled around the hospital bed. The girl slowly opened her eyes. “Where am I?” she asked to the crying people around her. Her mother’s eyes were red with tears. She sat up and felt pain in her hands. She looked down to notice the stiches on her wrists.

Suicide affects everyone, those who love you, those who know you, those who depend on you. For some of them, their life ends when yours does.

He sat at the bedroom window. Staring straight, his gaze unwavering. The tears slowly drying on his cheeks. He had heard the gunshot from the next street. It had been his best friend. What to do without him. To walk into school tomorrow without him. He was alone.

Suicide is the second largest cause of teen deaths. More teenagers die from suicide than Cancer, Heart disease and any other illness combined.  And the UK has the highest self-harm rate in all of Europe; 400 people in every 100,000. That is a staggering figure. And we, as a class, as a school and as a nation, can help bring it down.

The Big Picture

The beginning

The tower cut a black line through the undisrupted white. The column of graphite rose, slowly spiraling and spinning, weaving it’s way through the pearly mist. The contours blossomed all over the page. The faint hiss of the pneumatic door was like a gunshot in Reuben’s head. The sketchbook disappeared into the folds of his coat, just as the Hunter entered the train car. It floated, as if made of cloud, down the aisle, and stopped next to him. Reuben was the only one in the carriage. It was a Hunter-type Robotic Artificially Intelligent Droid, or RAID, designed and operated by the government to control the population. Not that it needed controlling. Ever since the revolution, the destruction, and when the city was rebuilt, the people hadn’t needed anything. Everything was provided for them.  Shelter, clothes, food, entertainment, they were all instantly and eternally available in every home in the city. The people were docile, as if every one of them had been injected with a permanent sedative. They just followed their routines, and wore the same identical clothes, and lived in the same identical houses. People only leaved their houses to do stuff they couldn’t do at home. The black orb hung in the air in front of him. It’s photoreceptor turned to him, an endless pit of hazy amber. “Name” the orb emitted. “Reuben Eddie, 23, 104 North”. This was his address. “Destination” asked the Hunter. “68, 55 West” replied Reuben. Marco’s address. The Hunter floated away through the empty carriage, and disappeared through the door.

Marco

Marco Talbot’s aging face gazed out of the window of his two-bedroom bungalow. Over the tops of the identical houses that surrounded his, he could just make out the towering grey form of the city center. His mind drifted to the future. He imagined a different world, where the city was beautiful and clean, and not shrouded in the permanent smog of pollution. Where the buildings were elegant and different, and people had their own point of view, not just what the government wanted them to think. Most of all, he dreamed of colour. There was no ` in the world. The city was all black and grey. Art, colour, freedom of speech and expression were all forbidden. He tilted his head down to notice the man walking up his lawn. The brown curly hair and green eyes of Reuben Eddie. Marco smiled at the sight of the almost child-like face bobbing up to his front door. He left the window to open the door, but stopped when he saw Reuben emerging through the doorway. “Morning Marco” said the figure in front of him. “ Morning Reuben. I forgot I gave you my code”. Marco strode into the kitchen and turned to haul himself up onto the counter. “Any progress?” he asked. “Yes, the twins are on their way now, and ready to lay the charges at noon” Reuben replied. “Excellent. It’s a damn risky job they’re doing, but they’re doing it for a good cause. It’s going to be pandemonium when it goes up” Marco stood up and led Reuben into the living room. The walls were bare. A grey sofa and a small table were all that occupied the vast room.  There was a thermostat on the wall. Marco twisted the knob to the highest setting. There was a muffled click, and a panel of the wall swung away, as if it had melted into nothing. It was like someone had opened a chest full of jewels. Reuben’s eyes dilated and then adjusted to the bright colours. The plain white wall had revealed a cacophony of greens, reds, yellows and many other colours. “You’ve made more” Reuben pointed out. And Marco had. The last time they had met, Marco’s portfolio consisted of nothing more a few canvases, but now there was a whole multitude of paintings, drawings and pastel sketches, lining all three walls of the small hidden room. “They’re incredible” Reuben gasped in awe. “How many are there?. “Nearly fifty” Marco replied. Reuben remembered the drawing in his pocket. “Oh, and I made some sketches” he said. He showed Marco the building. “It’s good. It’s very good. If we live through all this, and our plan works, it may even be able to exist”, Marco remarked. “We’d better get going, or it’ll never get done”. The pair walked out, closed the door to the concealed artworks, left the house, and headed for the train station.

The Town Hall

Max and Clare trotted down the steps of the town hall and hurried into an alley on the side of the circle. They turned back to look at the building they had just left. It was a large concrete stack, with square windows here and there, much like a taller version of the thousands of simple grey buildings that made up the city. It was not extraordinary, but it was the heart of the government, the corrupt elites who had founded the city purely to make money from the people. Max and Clare had grown to hate the government for years. When they were young, they ran across an old man in the street. He grabbed them violently, and screamed at them about how he had hated his life, and how he was so crazy from living in a boring, repetitive world. A Hunter then appeared, and silenced the man. The twin children then carried on, but the event stayed with them for years, coming back to haunt them. They began to build up a hatred for the government, and the systems that they lived by. Clare especially. She once attacked and destroyed a Hunter, and she had her tongue cut off by the government. Now, they were two of over a hundred people throughout the city who felt this way, and were actively taking part in the destruction of the town hall, which they hoped would start an end to the tyrannous regime.  Two silhouettes appeared at the end of the alley.  “Hello Reuben, hello Marco. It’s all set”, Max said to the approaching figures. “Good”, was the reply of Marco, emerging from the darkness. “Well, let’s do it. If we don’t survive, hopefully our deaths can spark the people to rebel”. The three of them walked up to the town hall and stood on the steps. Max ran out into the circle and stood in front of the town hall, a large, homemade camera over his shoulder. It would stream live the following events to the entire population. The sky was it’s usual smog grey, from the pollution produced by the factories on the borders of the city. The usually empty circle contained a few people, wondering around or sitting on benches. Marco looked around at the grey buildings that lined the circle, to the grey sky, to the grey paving stones and benches. “We have a message we need to send,” he shouted. The people in the circle turned their heads to gaze at him. “I have a dream. We live in a world that is intolerant to colour. The people in this city are so obsessed by what they do and what they think they know to be true, that they never pause to look up and think about other possibilities”. He definitely had everyone in the circle’s attention now. They were staring avidly. “Have any of you ever wondered what’s outside the city walls? Behind your TV screens? Behind this door?” he asked the audience, indicating the town hall behind him. “Well, open your minds!” As he spoke, a huge waterfall of colour cascaded down the face of the town hall. It depicted a utopia, a beautiful environment of light and happiness. “You don’t know what you’re missing!” Marco shouted to the camera. “You are all under the oppression of a government who make their money from your labour, and live by the concept of ruling your minds. You are the mindless slaves of their oppression! Break free!” The doors to the town hall burst open, and a ball of black erupted from within, like an ominous cloud under the gigantic poster of light. The camera could not see the Hunter, as Marco was blocking it from view, but Max gasped when Marco’s knees buckled, and his limp body rolled down the steps, with a bullet in the back of his head. Reuben was the first one to react. He dashed forward and shouted at the Hunter, with a small box in his hand. “If I press this button”, revealing a small button on the remote, “The town hall will explode”. The Hunter was programmed to be smart. It stayed still. Suddenly, all over the circle, people began to stand up. They were taking off their clothes. They peeled off their identical coats and jumpers, but underneath…They all wore brightly coloured shirts. Every one of them was wearing colour. It seemed the whole population was rebelling in a self-organized, peaceful revolt. “How did we not know about this?” Reuben murmured. He half expected them to all fall dead at the hands of the Hunter. But the Hunter, unknown to everyone else, was going through all possible ways out of the situation. The events unfolding in front of it were overloading it’s system. It decided on one solution, as it saw the sudden burst of colour as a huge violation of the law. It sent out an ultra-sonic pulse. Hidden in the town hall, Max and Clare’s bombs went off.

Let there be light

His wrist was cocooned in plaster. Half his face was red, the painfully peeling skin starting to beg to be itched. Reuben’s eyes beamed around the train car, full of passengers. They all looked different, wore different clothes, carried different things, different colours. He strolled out of the car and onto the platform. He stepped into the elevator and whooshed up out of the earth. As he stepped out onto the street, cradling his plastered wrist, he looked up, and gazed at the huge tower of coloured glass, erupting out of the ground in front of him. It had been a hard battle to win. He looked down to see a column of stone in front of his creation, with the names of the fallen inscribed on it. Fallen in the battle for freedom. And now colourful shops, restaurants and bars surrounded the circle. Reuben walked into the entrance hall of the huge tower. He strode up to the elevators to rise up to his penthouse office, and gazed at the plaque that hung over the four doors. It read; “Designed by Reuben Eddie. In honor of Marco Talbot”. And sure enough, the walls of the lobby were covered in beautiful canvases.

Lord of the Flies: A story of controversy

What is 'Lord of the Flies' about?

Lord of the Flies was written in 1954 by William Golding, about a group of school boys whose plane crashes on a desert island in the midst of a raging war. The boys are alone without adults, and their quickly formed society falls into ruins when a number of the boys imagine a 'beast' living on the island, and the whole group falls into an animalistic, tribal, homicidal insanity. They are driven to murder and violence, which did not go down well in public opinion. According to the American Library Association, it is one of the most frequently challenged books in circulation.

Who started the controversy around 'Lord of the Flies', who else wanted to ban it, and what were their reasons?

Lord of the Flies was first challenged by a school in Dallas in 1974. It was constantly challenged throughout the 1980’s, mainly by schools in the United States, being flagged with alleged themes of violence, animalism, bad language, racism and profanity. Generally, these schools found the book inappropriate for the age of their students, and therefore removed it from their reading lists and libraries. But it was also, challenged by black parents, because of racist, defamatory and demoralizing content. 

The church challenged it too, because it depicted religion as a non-civilizing factor, as the boys were religious, and violence was determined by superstition and rightness.

How successful were people in banning ‘Lord of the Flies’?

The majority of the public challenging the book were schools or educational organizations, so the necessary actions they needed to take to stop their students reading them did not need a legal ban. But they still challenged the books, but it was not officially banned. All other challengers, although providing reasonably strong cases, got close to banning the book in the United States, but the book was kept on the Bloomfield reading list.

Are there any censorships or bans still in place today?

Currently, there are not any direct bans or censorships of the novel, but the original film was initially rated an 18, because of violence, nudity and punishment scenes, which were cut out in many countries. The irony of this was, the actors in the film were not actually 18 when they made the film, so they could not watch the film they just made. The film has been censored more widely, because it is a visual interpretation of a book that is one of the most frequently challenged there is. The themes in the book are controversial to start with, so to put them in a form where they are much easier to interpret and visualize, there will be a much higher risk of censorship, bans, and public disapproval.

Do I agree with any of these attempted bans?

No I don’t. I have studied Lord of the Flies at school, which is now part of the Common Entrance English syllabus, and I think that it contains many moral lessons that should be taught to students from the appropriate age. It contains lessons about human nature, the fragility of civilization, and how easily it can be corrupted. It also proves the capability of the human mind and body, it proves how ideas and images can drive even young boys to cruelty and murder. I think these concepts are portrayed in an excellent style of literature and language, and I believe it is an essential book to read, as it is really a revelation to literature.

An Investigation into Guy Montag (Fahrenheit 451)

In the start of the novel Fahrenheit 451, the main character Guy Montag is described by many different concepts, metaphors and conflicting ideas. The first line, "It was a pleasure to burn", is only a very short, simple sentence, but conceals a powerful and explanitive description of Montag's character. It evokes that he is destructive, which perhaps is driven by a metaphorical fire inside of him, but also that he is different from regular modern, civilised people, as he is purposefully burning something, and if you read on a few lines, you will find that this something is a house, which of course is a thing that would definitely be frowned upon to burn in todays culture, especially for someone to take pleasure from doing so. You would also find signs indicating that he may be authoritative, due to his role of burning, and that he is dignified and proud in this role, i.e; "significant number" and "brass nozzle in his fists". Turn the page, and you would find constant references to happiness, emphasising the smile left on his face by the fire, and adding how he whistled while he walked. " Minstrel man" is a quote that leaves Montag shrouded in the soot of evil, but the fact that the Minstrels were in fact white people, perhaps implies that there is some good, kindness and difference behind his cloak of black. Overall, in only the first two pages of the book, the author has already provided an in depth description of the central character, if thorough investigation of the text is carried out.