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Saturday, March 26, 2005
Kids TodayThe rule for students who shoot up their high schools isn't shyness, or anti-social behavior, or a video-game addiction, or a fascination with Goth music, or warped scribblings in a notebook, or even neo-Nazism. The rule is that they're suicidal. A study by the Secret Service claims that about 78% of all kids who went after their parents or classmates -- from Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris at Columbine to Kip Kinkel and on and on through the pathetic (and lengthening) roll of names -- "exhibited a history of suicide attempts or suicidal thoughts." A lot of them, including Jeff Weise in Minnesota, had been treated for their depression with some kind of drug. Prozac, Ritalin, Zoloft. Most of these drugs have never been tested on teenagers. Lately they carry a warning, but it seems clear that the untested drugs are at least a possible answer to the question, "Why'd this all start happening in the '90s?"
My novel was a brooding moral grapple with teenage violence and nihilism; but Arianna Huffington's practical response from six years ago should be a national conversation by now.
posted by Michael Scott Moore |
5:49 PM
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