To be or not to be

Despite the usual teenager's angst and twenties' panic, I never attempted suicide.  Or even considered it, or daydreamed about it.  However miserable I might have felt at any given time, being miserable always seemed preferable to not being.

On the contrary, my aim was always directed toward living to be 120.

But suicide is a problem among certain groups of young people -- especially, according to an article in this month's Atlantic,* among high school students of the upper middle class.  A study of Palo Alto high schools -- especially Henry M. Gunn high school, a school filled with the children of Silicon Valley techies -- show levels of substance abuse and depression equal to those of the most underprivileged kids, with suicide as a frequent culmination.  Palo Alto schools in general have a suicide rate four or five times higher than the national average.  And Palo Alto young people themselves call Gunn "the suicide school."

Why suicide -- in Palo Alto?  The article points out that Gunn's student population is over 40 percent Asian, with the competitive nature of Asian parents adding pressure to their lives.  The kids live in the shadow of Stanford University.  Admission to that school is offered to many Gunn students -- but obviously, despite strong parental pressure, falls just beyond the reach of most of their equally bright and motivated peers.  Another factor, a macabre factor, is the proximity of the CalTrain commuter tracks, with trains whizzing by at high speed several times an hour.  Most of the suicides discussed in the article resulted from students throwing themselves in front of a Caltrain engine.

The author has interviewed students, and sat in on meetings of concerned parents.  Everyone is concerned.  For parents, the difficulty is in finding the right balance between encouraging their kids to "succeed," and pressuring them into unwanted stress.  And the kids themselves have often internalized their parents' goals, resisting efforts to make their lives simpler and less complex.

The question in my own mind -- to which the article alludes briefly in passing -- is why some commit suicide while the vast majority of their equally stressed classmates do not.  Clearly, pressure to get into "the right school" is unusually strong at Gunn.  Most students respond by multiplying AP courses and extracurricular activities to the point of being totally frazzled.  But being totally frazzled during high school -- while undesirable in itself -- generally leads most of them to highly successful and satisfying careers. 

But for a few, it leads to suicide.  The article points out how arbitrary and unpredictable suicide can be.  The death with which the article led off was that of a highly popular, straight-A, Asian-American student.  He was funny and had close friends.  Everyone liked him.  His closest friends saw no signs of depression, or excessive stress, or unhappiness.  And yet, he deliberately stepped into the path of a Caltrain commuter train.

The article offers no solutions, except to suggest that less pressure on kids would statistically result in fewer suicides.  Beyond statistics, however, why a few children find life not worth living remains a mystery.  Two people, unlike two computers, don't react predictably to the input of the same data.

In general, I find that fact reassuring.  But it complicates the task of keeping kids alive throughout their adolescence.
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* Hanna Rosin, "The Silicon Valley Suicides," The Atlantic, December 2015.