Teenage suicide and its relation to Family dysfunction

            , thousands of teenagers commit suicide. Suicide is the third leading cause of death for 15-to-24-year-olds (Merritt p132). Suicides among young people have increased dramatically over recent years. I find it disturbing to know that our young people feel the need to take their own life and something needs to be done to prevent this from reoccurring time after time. About two months ago in our local metropolitan area an eighteen year old male student committed suicide by driving his car over a bridge off highway 270. I did not know him personally but I sent my condolences to the family. When something so tragic happens within such a close proximity it makes you question how many of our young people want to end their lives or have attempted suicide. Suicide is a frightening issue to discuss but regardless it has to be talked about. I intend to look at the different causes of suicide in the United States in attempt to increase the public's awareness on this issue. .
             When looking at the issue of suicide among our young people one can only think of one perspective on the issue and that is suicide in a negative aspect. However there are those who believe that suicide is "a permanent solution to a temporary problem," and that our teenagers are not the ones at risk. "Suicide as a permanent solution" should never be the case yet this seems to be the response from many of those who attempted suicide and were unsuccessful. In an article by Matthjis Koopman he argues that suicide is caused by family dysfunction. Koopman defines functional by quoting Levi-Strauss as "the internal organization of families has to be defined and enforced in such a way that the family is able to carry out its basic functions" (Koopman 1992). He goes on to say that it is when these criteria's are not met that one can classify a family as being dysfunctional. "A family dysfunction, conversely, can be defined as a situation in which these distinctions are unclear, confused or absent" (Koopman 1992; 1993).