Suicide Belt

Rates up for affluent teens

The 20-mile stretch of lakefront along Chicago's suburban North Shore is one of the richest areas in the nation, with family income of $60,000 a median. Teen-agers there grow up in well-manicured neighborhoods, attend first-rate colleges and flaunt the trappings of affluence; many drive around in Mercedes. Yet for such youths, there is trouble in paradise. Among local therapists, the area is known as "the suicide belt." In a 17-month period ending last summer, 28 teen-agers took their own lives. Eighteen died by gunshot, eight by hanging and two by lying down in front of trains.

Nationwide, suicide is now the third leading cause of death among youngsters ages 15 to 19, ranking just behind accidents and homicides. In 1977, the last year for which figures are available, 1,871 teen-agers in that bracket killed themselves, a 20% increase in one year and a 200% increase since 1950. In affluent areas the rate of increase is higher. One cluster of ten suburbs on Chicago's North Shore now leads the state in teen-age suicides, with a 250% increase in the past decade. This is true despite various community efforts to curtail the upsurge. Among them: training programs for schoolteachers and social workers in suicide detection and prevention, seminars and discussion groups for parents and children, and 24-hour "hot lines" such as the one maintained by Chicago Psychoanalyst Joseph Pribyl, which receives more than 150 suicide-related calls a month.

"We have an outrageous number of suicides for a community our size," says Laurie Pfaelzer, 19, of Glencoe, who knew one student who slit his wrist and two who ran their cars into trees. "Growing up here, you're handed everything on a silver platter, but something else is missing. The one thing parents don't give is love, understanding, acceptance of you as a person." Adds Isadora Sherman of Highland Park's Jewish Family and Community Service: "People give their kids a lot materially, but expect a lot in return. No one sees his kids as average, and those who don't perform are made to feel like failures."

Still, suicides are hardly limited to students who cannot keep up academically or socially. The death of Rhonda Alter, 19, an attractive, intelligent and popular student who hanged herself last year, sent shock waves through Winnetka. "She had everything going for her, and no sign anything was wrong," says her teen-age brother. Last week a Winnetka resident overheard two youngsters coolly talking about suicide, "just like they were discussing what kind of socks to buy." Says he:

"I'm convinced that intelligent kids are most likely to commit suicide. They carry around burdens beyond themselves and feel frustrated at the lack of solutions."

Television, according to one theory, leads children to expect quick answers and undermines their ability to tolerate frustration. Says Psychiatrist Mary Giffin, who treats depressed teens on the North Shore: "Programs present serious problems and solve them in half an hour. Life just doesn't work that way." Other experts blame the breakdown of the extended family, the rise of a narcissistic culture and the post-Viet Nam disillusionment with politics. "To some extent, the epidemic of adolescent suicides can be traced back to Viet Nam," says Chicago Psychiatrist Harold Visotsky. "Young people became disillusioned with the magic of government, and this extended to all institutions, including the family."

But why should the suicide rate be so high among the well-to-do? Says Visotsky: "People on the lower end of the social scale expect less than these people. Whatever anger the poor experience is acted out in antisocial ways--vandalism, homicide, riots--and the sense of shared misery in the lower-income groups prevents people from feeling so isolated. With well-to-do kids, when the rattle goes in the mouth, the foot goes on the social ladder. The competition ethic takes over, making the child feel even more alone. He's more likely to take it out on himself, not society." The '60s may have held down the teen-age suicide rate by providing a sense of community, built around drugs and opposition to Viet Nam. "But even that's gone," says Los Angeles Psychiatrist Irving Berkovitz. "There's nothing to distract a teen-ager today."

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