https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-03-cdc-probes-suicide-utah-teens.html

Strangely, because it's Utah, there's no mention of the prevalence of mormonism as one of the possible contributing factors...

Soft Machine Wrote:
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> Strangely, because it's Utah, there's no mention
> of the prevalence of mormonism as one of the
> possible contributing factors...

I agree with you, but the CDC is a federal agency, and mention of a specific religion as a possible contributing factor to suicide would be the beginning of a major kerfluffle (which could possibly spread to other, non-Mormon but highly religious, geographic areas--for example: the possible initiation, in federal research studies, of "religion" as one possible contributor to suicide by youth in those states).

I think it would be VERY difficult for the CDC to mention Mormonism, even though you are exactly right in what you say.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/23/2018 04:18AM by Tevai.

The plot thickens. But then, it's always been pretty damn thick. There's a fog on Mormon psychology, I think.

I agree, Tevai, they couldn't come out and say it. I should have indicated I was being ironic ;-)

But they seem unlikely to solve the problem without taking a look at the mormon drive for perfectionism, which is now acknowledged as being detrimental to psychological health.

Soft Machine Wrote:
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> I agree, Tevai, they couldn't come out and say it.
> I should have indicated I was being ironic ;-)

Sorry, Soft Machine...I am sometimes (veering towards often) irony- and sarcasm-challenged.

:D

There's a lost generation of youth inside the Utah socio-cultural fabric.

They lack educational opportunities, an economic future when they stay where they are. The peer pressure is huge on those kids to either become "over-conformists" the set expectations for them by their parents and teachers as Mormons inside their cloistered communities.

Or, if not fitting that cookie mold, defect or default to the "under conformist" mindset, where they can get into the illicit drugs scene, addiction, etc.

A police manual where I worked in Silicon Valley my senior year of high school, highlighted Ogden as being in the top ten crime ridden cities nationally. I'd recently moved from Ogden to there, and knew from first hand experience how bad it was. The reason the police manual provided that led to Ogden's high crime rate was this polarization between the over-conformists ie, Mormons, and everyone else.

When a society gets stretched so far one way, there is a proclivity to go the opposite direction in a sense to bring "balance." In Utah it results in more disenfranchised youth. There are just not the opportunities there for them to get ahead.

Out of my cousins who raised their children between the Morridor of Utah and Idaho, three of their children have committed suicide that I know of. Only one of them a teenager, who was gay and was ridiculed by her school and peers for being so. She had no support system other than her family.

The other two were in their early to mid-20's. One was a returned missionary. The other a scholar/engineer whose father drove him over a cliff almost literally. He jumped from a moving vehicle his dad was driving to escape his berating him. All of them were Mormon.

That's been in just the past ten years. It's beyond sad. Were they preventable? I believe so.

Like your post Amyjo. I graduated from college in Ogden and was well aware of the crime problem there. The thing I noticed from my years there and visiting over 3 decades is the social gap between the teenagers. It appeared to me, either you were Mormon and straight or you appeared as a freak, gothic, etc. There didn't seem to be anything in the middle. Either you were a Mormon conformist or you were a non-conformist.

This breaks my heart and it should not be happening.

At least it will bring attention to the problem.

I remember visiting Provo several years ago. A young
kid was getting his hair cut in the salon my family used.
He was waiting as we were and said he hated the Mormon
Church!

The conversation turned to much anger. People better
wake up and EXPOSE this crazy cult for all its worth.
They are SOLEY responsible for so much damage to innocent
lives and have not been held to account for it.

It cannot continue too much longer. The Old folks are dying.

Masturbation age group. Shaming starts. Leads to depression.
Find out where the shaming comes from and you can fix the problem.

From the article:

"Of course, social media plays an increasingly important role in young people's lives. The Utah report found that in nearly 13 percent of cases, during the week before the suicide, the victim's family had restricted their access to smartphones, tablets, video games and other devices.

"Did cutting off access to the devices help precipitate suicide in those cases? The CDC team isn't sure, but they said that more study is needed to understand whether or not "interruption to [online] social support networks, [or] distress over losing access to the device" might exacerbate already fraught emotional states."


I've been wondering about this a lot lately.

It is hard for us older folks to imagine a being, our children and grandchildren, living their entire lives on-line. For us who had a life before the smartphone, even before the internet and home computers, our high-tech life is lived with a memory of an older non-tech, analog life. There is a lot in that older life that is not available to children today who only know an immediate, digital life. How time passes is only one of many differences.

When we were young it was pretty normal to be grounded for a week, say, for transgressing a rule. Many parents today therefore think nothing of grounding a child from their electronics for a week. "No problem," these parents say, "*we* weren't even allowed outside after school when we were grounded; you have it easy." That line of thinking is extremely flawed for so many reasons. Just for one, how that week of punishment feels in real-time, and the consequences to social life, are vastly different between the two generations. I'm hearing among social worker types that, as a rule of thumb, 24 hours of no electronics is equivalent to a week of grounding when we were young.



By the way, doesn't Utah often place in the top ten States for happiness?

That is what caught my eye. I see so many kids nowadays so stuck to their phones that they probably have to use acetone to pry their fingers off. I would say if you have a bad family situation, feel you have no real friends, gay and scared, or any of the other traumas of youth, and you have your only support-- technology-- ripped from you, the ensuing despair from that type of withdrawal could be formidable. Heroin or cell phone withdrawal. Maybe not so different?

Utah? Happiest State? Don't they just get those statistics from surveys? Cuz, uh, Mormons lie. I was raised to believe Mormons were the happiness people on earth, had a special joy that no one else had, and I for one would have never said anything different even when I was down and out. Brainwashing at it's finest. Tow the line and make your leaders look good.

It isn't just the "good" Mormon kids committing suicide. It's also kids in inactive families who are ostracized, kids who are non members, come from broken homes (Mormon and non), kids with mental illness, and the list goes on and on. Unfortunately there is at least one a year at the closest high school in my area and it is a small student population. Also young adults dying from drug addiction (accidental or overdose I'm not sure).

This topic hits close to home. All I can say is I will NEVER assume it is only because of Mormonism, only because of bad parents.... No one has any idea what goes on in that teen's life. It's multi-faceted.