Medicine: Children & Suicide

A schoolteacher with a twelve-year-old boy in tow appeared last week at the University of Vienna's Psychiatric Clinic and told its chief. Dr. Hans Hoff: "If you don't take this child. I'm going to quit my job. He has threatened suicide, and I refuse to take the responsibility.'' Dr. Hoff agreed to treat the youngster and his problems, but he had charge of only one of many cases that have recently alarmed Vienna's teachers, public and press. In four months, 16 children aged 9 to 16 have tried to commit suicide in Vienna, and one of them, a boy of 13 who jumped from a third-story window, succeeded.

All the cases of threatened and attempted suicide by juveniles had one feature in common: they seemed to have been triggered by failure in school. The press charged that teachers were being tough and unsympathetic. The teachers retorted that the press, by blowing up the reported cases into an epidemic, had made suicide a heroic prospect for despondent youth. A case in point: a lad of 15 threatened suicide unless his marks were raised; when the teacher refused, the boy slashed his wrists (but survived).

Dr. Hoff decided to try to put the whole matter in perspective. Last week he lectured school authorities and teachers (and through them, the press and parents) on "Youth in Crisis." In the first place, he said, this is no suicidal epidemic among Viennese youth—there are not many more attempts than usual, and the rate is little higher than in most of Western Europe.

Dr. Hoff laid down these principles as governing children's attempts at suicide:

¶ They result from a feeling of being insecure and unloved.

¶ They are of long standing and begin in the home, years before the child gets to worrying about school marks. The school alone is never responsible.

¶ A parent who makes good marks a prerequisite for loving acceptance sets the stage, and a teacher who then shows lack of feeling in handling a child's failure, may bring on the dramatics of attempted suicide. But in nearly every case, the child has been conditioned by a previous suicide in the family, or by newspaper stories making the attempt seem heroic.

Teachers, said Dr. Hoff, should keep in closer touch with parents about their pupils' problems. And they should have better training in detecting the neurotic symptoms which most commonly lead to suicide attempts—especially excessive daydreaming, sudden drops in grades, and social withdrawal from teachers and class mates. Dr. Hoff gave one final warning: teachers must not underestimate the seriousness of children who use suicide threats as a form of blackmail. "They do not do it for a joke," he said, "but because they are in need of something."