Netishyn Buries Teen Suicides And Asks Why?
On March, 2 in the modest cemetery of Netishyn, the nuclear specialists'
city, two fresh graves were dug for 13 year-old Olena Linnyk and Daria
Koriak who jumped off the roof of a nine-story building.
It has already been two weeks since an anti-influenza quarantine was
announced in the schools. Thus many teenagers accompanied the girls on
their last journey - those who knew them and those who did not. Netishyn
cannot find the answer to the terrible questions: why, and what for?..
Mykhailo Mychuda, chief investigator of Netishyn Prosecutor's Office is
investigating this difficult case. He has already talked to the grief-stricken
parents of the deceased, to their teachers, to the teenagers who the girls
said goodbye to and then went to the fatal roof of the building on Nezalezhnosty
(Independence) Prospect. "Many versions are being worked out. We do not
rule out the possibility that somebody had such a terrible influence on
Olena and Daria," Mr. Mychuda told The Day's reporter.
The girls lived in normal families, were good pupils, and took part
in amateur performances. Nothing in their behavior showed that they could
do such terrible thing, say their teachers. There is information that they
saw on television a report from Russia on the burial of the three girls
who also jumped off a multistory building. Could the reporter have unwittingly
convinced them that there is nothing further, that the parents will remain
grief-stricken till the end of their lives?
Senior investigator Mychuda diligently studies the acquaintances of
the deceased: "where they lived and studied." That fatal Sunday evening
Olena and Daria talked to three girls and a boy - not their classmates,
all their own age or a little older. When the girls said they would never
see them again, the teenagers interpreted the phrase as a gloomy joke.
Mr. Mychuda says that in the school where the girls studied there is
psychologist's office, that in Netishyn there are sports clubs and amateur
centers for children. However he agrees that nowadays everyone is busy,
occupied with everyday concerns - for example, people made a tent town
in front of the city administration demanding their pay. And perhaps this
is why the young generation shuns older people. Or maybe it is just the
other way round, that the older generation shuns the younger? The tragedy
is still so fresh, as the graves made in the cemetery last Tuesday. Will
it be understood? Will people do everything they can to prevent its recurrence?
By Mykhailo VASYLEVSKY, The Day
Juvenile suicides rise in Ukraine
"Today the problem of juvenile suicides is one of the most acute in Ukraine,"
says head of the Toxicology Department of Okhmatdyt (Maternity and Childhood
Protection) specialized Ukrainian children's hospital Borys Sheiman. "While
in 1996 20 children were brought to our Department after suicide attempts,
in 1998 it was 51. They are mainly between the ages of eleven and fourteen
who took poisons from household medicine chests. They point to various
motives for attempting suicide. While ten years ago the main reason for
suicide was an unhappy romance, now it is loneliness and lack of parental
attention. It is interesting that girls, who are more emotional than boys,
commit suicides more often."
"When children take a box of pills or jump off the eleventh floor they
do not think primarily about death," the chair of Psychiatry Department
of the Kyiv Medical Academy of Post-Graduate Education Valery Kuznetsov
believes. "Doctors call it 'demonstrative suicide' used by a child to show
the world its protest. If the parents could notice their children's mood
on time, there would be fewer such tragedies.
"Of course, disease, schizophrenia for example, also can be one of the
reasons for committing suicide, when a child hears 'voices' ordering it
to die. But such cases are extremely rare. The Netishyn tragedy is not
typical either. Perhaps the situation can be described as induced psychosis:
one of the girls took the lead in suicide, and the other for some reason
was under her influence."
The doctors could not save two girls from Netishyn, but in most cases
they succeed in resuscitating children attempting suicide.
Borys Sheiman told The Day's reporter: "For several weeks after
an attempt to die the child is still in a depressed, suicidal state, and
may repeat the action. And if the first attempt of suicide is caused by
desire to make the child's problems known, the second time the child really
wants to die and often is successful. That is why the parents should be
very attentive to their son or daughter and do everything possible for
the child to feel moral and spiritually comfortable."
By Inna ZOLOTUKHINA, The Day






