No One Saw My Pain: Why Teens Kill Themselves [Hardcover]

Andrew Slaby (Author), Lili Frank Garfinkel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1994

There is always a moment of shock, of horror - and for any parent, of fear - when a teenager chooses suicide. How could this happen? Didn't his parents know he was so depressed? She had everything to live for - what went wrong? Barry Garfinkel and Andrew Slaby, psychiatrists specializing in depression and crisis intervention, shed light on these questions. The book aims to alert parents and friends of depressed teens to the factors that may lead to suicide.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The responses of eight families who have lost a child to suicide are examined here in case studies by Slaby, a New York psychiatrist specializing in depression and crisis intervention, and freelance writer Garfinkel, whose specialty is advocacy issues. Although the profiles of the distraught teens and their families are varied, they share one important feature: clues to the adolescents' behavior were almost always overlooked or not taken seriously. In his samples of counseling sessions, Slaby shares clinical experiences that have led to the formulation of practical strategies for use by parents and other interventionists. This treatment of a complex subject considers the differing perceptions of life events that may trigger suicidal thoughts in teens, especially in those who are depressed. The book is a call to give suicidal teens the attention--familial and medical--they so desperately need.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Despite his book's misleading title, Slaby's experiences in counseling grieving parents raise important questions about why so many youths' cries for help go unanswered. More than 2,000 American teenagers kill themselves every year, and one in ten experiences some form of severe depression during the high school years. Slaby, a psychiatrist specializing in depression and crisis intervention, profiles seven families responding to the loss of a teenager and one case of failed suicide. Only in the last case do we have access to the child's feelings, and that discussion adds little to our general understanding because the child, from a born-again Christian family, could only insist that God had intervened to save his life when he tried to hang himself. So although Slaby purports to tell us ``why teens kill themselves,'' interviewing their parents and siblings tells us more about how families cope with their own pain. These physical and emotional reactions to loss range from isolation and denial to anger and blame. Some families become stronger in coping with their grief, others fall apart from the stress of self- accusation. Finally, in the section ``Working with Suicidal Youth,'' Slaby focuses on some of the reasons why our health care system, families, communities, and churches are sadly inadequate in responding to teenage depression. ``Almost half the teens who kill themselves,'' he writes, ``do so within three to six months of visiting their doctor for some vague medical reason.'' Few cries for help are followed up by doctors, teachers, suicide hotlines, or even the police. But it's not just the ``safety net'' that's failing. Slaby suggests that today's generation faces stresses- -divorce, drugs, violence, and economic instability--that bypassed previous generations, and these factors require a whole new set of coping strategies. ``Surviving Suicide'' would be a more apt, if less sensational, title for this casebook of eight families. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 220 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (May 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393035832
• ISBN-13: 978-0393035834
• Product Dimensions: 10.5 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,736,641 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #62 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Personal Health > Teen Health > Depression

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