How To Talk To Your Children About Suicide
With youngsters increasingly consumed by the world of social media, parents and educators here are increasingly concerned about their mental well-being, especially with suicide-related content trending online.
Suicides among 10- to 19-year-olds are at a 15-year high, and the Samaritans of Singapore (SOS) is concerned about this “new wave of negative media influence concerning suicide”
Out of Russia, the Blue Whale suicide game gets players to inflict harm on themselves.Players join by posting on a social media platform using certain hashtags. After vetting by the “curators” of the game, players are asked to complete 50 daily tasks, like cutting themselves. For the final 10 days, the player needs to wake up at a specified early-morning hour, listen to music and contemplate death. The final challenge at the end of the game is to commit suicide.
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In Netflix series 13 Reasons Why, high school student Hannah Baker kills herself in despair, leaving audiotapes for those she holds responsible — among them, her rapist, fickle friends and bullies.
Here's how you can broach the subject of suicide with your child, and get a healthy conversation going on this tricky subject.
Text: Foo Jieying, The New Paper/ Additional Reporting by Lisa Twang. Photo: Netflix