This Has to Stop

More kids are getting bullied and more kids are killing themselves. A large number of these kids are LGBT youth and it seems to be getting worse for them these days. Another young person in Canada ended his life on Friday. Jamie Hubley was openly gay. For being open with his sexuality and having a love for figure skating, he experienced severe bullying and even an assault. Jamie was 15 years old.


This is out of control.

Rest in Peace, Jamie

The Kids Are Not All Right **TRIGGER WARNING**

**Trigger Warning for Self-Harm, Abuse, EDs and Suicide**

Self-injury now outnumbers strokes in the number of hospitalizations per year in Canada. A recent study has found that more than 45 people a day are hospitalized in Canada for self-harm and the average age range is 15-19 years old - kids, basically. A revealing report claims that 85% of these self-injury cases involved poisonings and 9 out of 10 of these self-injury cases were attributed to prescription or non-prescription medication. 10% of the self-injuries included cutting or piercing and 2% were caused by strangulation. Currently, Canada is the only industrialized country to not have a national strategy for suicide or organizing the current prevention services that are available (CBC News). The CIHI Health Indicator Report shows that the numbers of self-injury hospitalizations between women and men differ significantly in all of the provinces of Canada. Here are the 2009 numbers - these are per 100,000 people. 

Graph from here

Note: The bottom axis simply lists every single province and various hospitals within each province. As you can see the differences are staggering. Keep in mind that these results are taken from hospitalizations and not everyone who self-injures is hospitalized for various reasons. Nevertheless, it is difficult to argue with these numbers. One of the most alarming differences was in Parkland, Manitoba where 390 per 100,000 females were hospitalized for self-injury compared to the non-existent numbers or "†" for numbers that were suppressed "due to small numbers or incomplete data" for males. This is in one year. 

For a chart including all figures see full report

Rates per Province, Image from CBC News

With more and more kids trying to kill themselves and harm themselves, more real conversations are needed to create REAL and lasting solutions. An increase in government spending for better medical care for all (including improved therapy without immediate reliance on medication) would be an obvious starting point - but it is clear that this self-harm epidemic is stemming from our larger cultural climate, particularly in the "developed" world. 
In the same article, the journalists made a note to include what the Canadian government wants to do to solve the problem [I will put my commentary in bold]: 


Canada is providing $27 million aimed at improving mental health of youth across the country.


[I think funding is great, but 27 million dollars could be increased if Harper bothered to properly tax the Big Oil companies existing in Canada. This likely will not happen because of the loyal camaraderie that the Oil companies have with the Harper regime. It is true that more funding is necessary to provide more programs dedicated to mental health and finding long-lasting solutions instead of rushing to medicate kids, but for having no national strategy in place, more money will likely be needed. This should not even be up for discussion - the health of the people should be a top priority]


The federal government is funding the projects through the Public Health Agency of Canada to support projects that focus on fostering mental health for children, youth and families in rural and northern communities, aboriginal communities, and those of low socio-economic status, Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq announced separately Wednesday in Toronto..


[Again, government funding is good but it will cost a lot and with Harper's recent "cut-backs" to public spending we may not see it happen. Throwing a bunch of social workers and public health workers into First Nations reserves with anti-self injury and anti-suicide campaigns are going to be merely scratching the surface of larger, systematic problems. When health workers leave the reserves will they also take all of the poverty, malnutrition and abuse? Will they take away the isolation and racism experienced on reserves? Will their money and campaigns truly end suicides and self-injury in Aboriginal youth? How will it shift the social consequences of institutionalized racism? How will those caught in the cycle of poverty be assisted by public health campaigns put out by the same government that requires them to work 2 jobs and still not have enough money to live? How can their needs truly be met when society is the real culprit?]


The projects address bullying, change and loss, substance abuse and suicide, and seek to strengthen family and community interactions and promote healthy relationships.


[I find it difficult to believe that these anti-bullying programs will end bullying, particularly online bullying. I would be interested into hearing about how they plan to tackle cyber-bullying. 


This money should also be used to create programs in schools and communities, like those mentioned above and create ones that challenge the status quo and call for Ottawa to take mental health seriously. Excuse me, I'm clearly being idealistic here, but it is just so brutally necessary. One can only dream of radical shifts in how we think and how we deal with one another]


For a full-list of programs and initiatives see here

These programs, if they are ever implemented, will likely not significantly decrease the incidences of self-harm because the culture -- this culture need to fundamentally change. This culture has an ever-growing love for violence, money, greed and power. In fact, this Western culture has provided a never ending buffet of self-hatred, apathy and loneliness sustained by a dominant class obsessed with self-starvation, sexy violence and out-of-control consumerism.


To deal with this we must address and critique the societal factors at play. 'First-World' children and teenagers from all socio-economic backgrounds are taking part in this harming behavior. 


Why? 


Young girls are starving, cutting and poisoning themselves while being abused and exploited en masse and yet we still collectively ask ourselves, why? Why would girls and women experience so much self-hatred, shame and trauma? why why why!? 
Of course, there are differences in experiences and reasons for harming oneself. But, despite our diverse reasons and experiences, I can confidently declare that there is nothing  inevitable or natural that causes women and girls to harm and hate themselves at such high frequencies. This hatred and desire to harm or damage oneself or to escape one's reality , my readers, is a result of the ruins of the male operated capitalist machine that has lead to the mass-scale destruction of civilization - both of the natural world and everything that dwells within it.


Women and girls as a sex-class have been and continue to be oppressed in various ways, some subtle and some horribly evident; Oppressed by delirious and out-dated institutions. Evidently, The Mass-Media Machine continues the practice of pop-culture driven woman-hating. The Mass Media Machine asserts that we, as women and girls, do not own our bodies  - our bodies are wrong, dirty, degraded, too fat, too skinny, too short, too tall; too-freckled, too black, too brown, too muscular. These bodies, our bodies are viewed and accepted as commodities under our current system. Likely this internalized commodification is a result of endlessly staring at ourselves; contorted, starved and constructed, plastered all over bus-stops and magazines - typically in pieces. 


Self-harming behavior, in my opinion, must be looked at within the culture that sustains it. The culture, our Western culture that sexualizes and normalizes violence and rape. It normalizes the abuse that can often lead to self-harming behavior. This culture is one that seems to require that any new horror film must include footage of a woman being viciously attacked or brutally raped. But, the evidence is everywhere and if you're not a horror-movie fan, fear not -  you could just turn on a television to see an episode of CSI. Or why not wander into the gas-station to look at the latest issue of FHM or playboy? The propaganda is endless. 


One cannot help but ask what if men were portrayed in the same ways and at the same frequency as women? What if males were self-injuring themselves at the same frequencies females are? There would be an outcry!


But I digress. 


Along with more funding, we must start to think critically and radically. New ideas are necessary - radical ideas.


But, is it even possible?


Is a world where rape and violence against women is not considered sexy even possible? I want a world where young women do not feel obliged to starve themselves only to feed the beauty industry - a world where kids don't feel it necessary to poison themselves to escape from their pain. I want that world.