Youth Suicide in New Zealand: a Discussion Paper
Youth Suicide in New Zealand: a Discussion Paper
Suicide
is tragic event which touches far too many families. As
society gropes around looking for ways to prevent it,
suicide rates in New Zealand remain among the highest in the
world. Our youth also commit suicide at terrifying rates.
The new report by Sir Peter Gluckman will sadly produce
little change in these appalling suicide stats. Gluckman and
the other contributors to the report bring no new insights
to the problem.
They admit that focusing on
adolescent mental health is not sufficient but go on to
propose the ‘high priority need’ to ‘introduce and
reinforce programmes focused on primary prevention starting
early in life’. This prevention is said to involve
‘strategies to improve impulse control and executive
function from early childhood’. Secondly they propose
developing ‘prevention strategies involving well-trained
and engaged mentors including peer mentors.’ We read of no
awareness in their advice of the responsibility of parents
to teach their children how to live and how to value their
own lives. Similarly, although ‘religion’ is mentioned
in passing, the fact is ignored that the present high levels
of suicide have coincided with the growing atheism within
society, the militant secularism of the state and the
rejection of the validity of the teaching of the Bible
including biblical ethics.
The primary cause
of suicide is not a mystery. Suicide is a result of despair,
whether in adults or children. And it is the very education
system which Dr Gluckman’s report concludes is the answer
to suicide, which is in fact one reason for it, as it
reflects the prevailing philosophy of materialism and
secularism. New Zealand education is based on the premise
that the material world is all that there is. The New
Zealand national school curriculum requires students from
new entrants through to school leavers to learn about
biological evolution which is presented as a fact. Children
are therefore learning that they are the product of chance
plus time, and are really just another form of animal. The
teaching that human beings are just evolved animals leaves
no room for a sense of purpose, nor for a rational basis for
deciding what is right and what is wrong. Adolescents are
therefore essentially taught that there is no meaning for
life beyond this material world. No amount of teaching
children not to act impulsively will compensate for the
genuine despair they feel.
There is one exception to the
teaching of secularism and that is found in the Maori
version of the New Zealand Curriculum. The Maori version of
the New Zealand curriculum teaches children in the science
curriculum about ‘all living things and their progeny:
human, plant, animal, microbial.’ Maori religion is
invoked to explain how the student is to understand science:
‘This is the strand protected by the majority of the
familial deities – namely the parents, Ranginui and
Papatuanuku, and their children Tanemahuta, Tangaroa,
Haumiatiketike, Rongomatane, Tumatauenga and
others’.
However, Maori animism and polytheism do not
supply the answers to the despair Maori youth often
feel.
The Gluckman report shows no real
insight into the shortcomings of the education system.
Secular youth in our public education system do not have the
option of realising that legitimate trials they have been
through like sexual abuse, bullying, domestic violence and
other horrendous experiences can be understood and dealt
with best in a Christian world and life view. The Christian
is not defined by their experiences, but by redemption and
the availability of God’s grace to cope with any
situation, no matter how dire.
Only when
society rediscovers the spiritual realities behind the
material world will adolescents and adults realise that
there really is real hope, and real meaning to this present
life.
Garnet Milne