It is with a heavy heart that I am posting this blog post. I was informed today that last night, a 16-year-old girl who had been battling mental illness for some time had lost the battle. This girl had also engaged in substance use. It has been proven that substance use and mental illness have been linked. Substance use is a direct cause of mental illness due to the changes in the chemical makeup it causes in the brain. It's bad enough that adults use and abuse substances, but the reason so many people try to warn against teens and
children using drugs is because the brain is still developing and any foreign chemicals that are introduced into the body are sent directly to the brain within seconds to minutes. These foreign chemicals alter the receptors in the brain causing chemical imbalances in the brain. The result of this are things like depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, and etc. There has been a study of suicides related to substance use that occur across the nation. The results of that study have found that every day there are 121 suicides per day, which equates to 44,193 suicides each year. Individuals who use drugs increase their risk for suicide by 10 to 14 times more than an individual who does not use substances. I am going to breakdown the percentage of risk each drug has associated with it. Alcohol intoxication accounts for 22% or 9,722 of
deaths by suicide; opiates were found to be involved in 20% or 8,839 of suicide deaths; marijuana was found to be involved in 10.2% or 4,508 of suicide deaths; cocaine was found to be involved in 4.6% or 2,033 of suicide deaths; and amphetamines were found to be involved in 3.4% or 1,503 of suicide deaths. These numbers may not seem that high, but if you consider the total number of suicide deaths, they really are too high. Did you know that the suicide deaths that were opioid-related have doubled in the last 15 years?? Actually, suicide for adolescence is the 4th most common cause of death for 10 to 14 year olds and the 3rd most common death for 15 to 24 year olds, in the United States! Parents, please talk to your kids, pay attention to them, and become more involved in your kids. We need to get these numbers down, they are entirely too high. The picture below is a picture of my nephew, whom we lost to a fentanyl overdose. He also struggled with mental health problems. It was needless and senseless. He was only 21 years old! When is enough going to be enough? How many more lives before drugs of any kind are no longer acceptable? What is it going to take for parents and kids alike to wake up and realize what the problem is?
Dawes, M. A., Mathias, C. W., Richard, D. M., Hill-Kapturczak, N., & Dougherty, D. M. (2008). Adolescent Suicidal Behavior and Substance Use: Developmental Mechanisms. Substance abuse : research and treatment, 2, 13–28. https://doi.org/10.4137/sart.s1044
Esang, Michael, and Saeed Ahmed. “A Closer Look at Substance Use and Suicide.” American Journal of Psychiatry Residents’ Journal, vol. 13, no. 6, June 2018, pp. 6–8. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp-rj.2018.130603.
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