Depression & Suicide

Research Project: Major Causes of Child and Youth Suicide

Reason: Suicides among children from elementary to high school appeared in the news constantly. Childhood is supposed be the time of carefree happiness devoted learning, having fun, and looking forward to the future. However, there are certain factors in our society, communities, schools and homes that cause such depression in some children that they decided to take their own lives. Indeed, childhood suicide may only be the tip of the iceberg of the much widespread problem of childhood depression precipitated by these factors. For our research project, we will search past news reports for cases of children and adolescents from 8 to 18 years of age who committed suicide. We will study each case of childhood suicide carefully to determine the factor that compelled the child to take his or her own life. These possible factors may include bullying, loss of a loved one, or academic failure, among others. We will perform statistical analysis of our data to determine the major causes of child and youth suicide.

Hypothesis: The major causes of child/youth suicide lead to severe depression.

Procedure:

1.  Find online news articles of suicides comitted by children and adolescents since the year 2000.

2. Determine the cause of suicide for each child or teen
3. Calculate the frequency of each cause of child and youth suicide
4. Compare the results to published research