Preventing adolescent suicide
By : Donna Wong
Suicide concerns most governments around the world today. It is one of the major causes of death among adolescents globally. Depression is common in youths nowadays and it is the major risk factor leading to adolescent suicide.
When the new school term in Hong Kong started in September 2015, three young people died by suicide. Two cases involved parents and their young children. These tragedies triggered a school-based research project conducted by Dr Andrew Low Yiu-tsang, Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences. The aim has been to prevent adolescents from ending their lives.
This three-year project (2017 to 2019) received HK$700,000 from the Quality Education Fund and is titled “The effectiveness of a school based prevention programme to reduce adolescent suicide risk factors in Hong Kong”. The target group was secondary school students aged 11 to 16 selected by the participating schools.
Dr Andrew Low Yiu-tsang Previous prevention programmes had mostly emphasised personal risk factors without mentioning those of family and peers. Dr Low’s research considers both personal factors (i.e. depression and problem-solving skills) and family factors. He says the media rarely mentions the role played by family in adolescent suicide but it is actually a very important feature.
Dr Low’s project has adopted Hong Kong’s first-ever multi-interventions approach by using three kinds of prevention programmes: the adolescent programmes, adolescent programmes involving parents, and adolescent programmes involving peers. The aim was to understand the correlation between depression and suicide through small group discussions and games. The programme for adolescents was intended to help participants understand stress, explore self-worth and learn how to manage emotions. The programme for parents highlighted how pressure originated from the family could affect adolescents and focused on enhancing listening and communication skills. The programme for peers trained student leaders to support their friends who experienced emotional disturbance.
“The results of the research help evaluate the effectiveness of this new attempt of using three school-based intervention programmes on reducing adolescents’ suicidal ideation and depression levels,” says Dr Low.
Dr Low has created five character figures to represent emotions – joy, sadness, disgust, fear, and anger – very much like the characters in the film Inside Out. “We experience one of these emotions when we face difficulties. There are both positive and negative sides generated by each of the emotions, e.g. fear can be associated with self-protection and being alert positively while it can also be associated with escape and being negatively conservative. The important point is to balance your emotions and reactions. Being too optimistic may make you reckless. On the other hand, some pressure can be a driving force for your action,” he says.
The small group discussions revealed that adolescents who participated in the programmes may often have extreme feelings such as being overly harsh on themselves or blaming others. They are often emotional and may easily feel depressed at the beginning of a new school term or after public holidays. After completing the programmes, students’ depression and suicide ideation were significantly reduced, the changes being mainly due to parents’ support and their own positive thinking.
As a former school social worker, Dr Low thinks some adolescents are now overly protected by their families. They often find solving problems by themselves to be a challenge and some experience low self-esteem. Also, they fail to appreciate the hard work behind other people’s success. “Even some social work students interning at an organisation rely on others to help them find cases,” Dr Low says, adding that people are not always willing to compromise or solve a problem when differences arise, especially since the social unrest in Hong Kong in 2019. There seems to be greater pressure from families, the news and social media. Subsequently, young people are prone to emotional extremes.
Dr Low’s new project explores the impact of last year’s social unrest on adolescents in Hong Kong and young people’s thoughts on parenting methods. He hopes to identify problems in the community and work towards preventing adolescent suicide.