Teen suicides associated with Christianity?

I had major suicidal urges when my mom was forcing Christianity on me in my teenage years. Because it’s a very stressful and abusive religion. I finally told her no. That I didn’t believe in the existence of a deity and that her religion was stupid.

I was just looking into the suicide rate affiliated with Christianity. But I can’t find any credible sources as most of them direct to Christian websites with bogus “claims” stating that Christianity protects against suicide. I don’t accept those answers because that feels like that’s a load of bullshit and misinformation.

Does anyone here have anything?

I don’t know of anything, however I’m pretty good with searching (I used google), so I recommend this search string (notice what is at the end, a very useful trick):

suicide rates Christianity vs secular site:*.edu

Restricting results to edu domains TENDS to return a much higher quality sources from a search engine, imo.

Religion and the risk of suicide: longitudinal study of over 1 million people

“Risks are similar for those with and without a religious affiliation, and Catholics (who traditionally are characterised by higher levels of church attendance) do not demonstrate lower risk of suicide. However, religious affiliation is a poor measure of religiosity, except for a small group of conservative Christians, although their lower risk of suicide may be attributable to factors such as lower risk behaviour and alcohol consumption.”

I have no data at present.

But a few years ago I was a moderator for a Twitch streamer from Holland who was transgender. During this time there was a constant flow of fellow transgenders, and quite a few expressed great confusion and anguish that their inner person was in direct conflict with their religious views.

I followed up by visit to a transgender forum that discussed such issues. And a great percentage expressed this anguish inflicted by religion.

They were tormented souls because of societal pressures, and definitely from their inner conflict inflicted by religion.

If my tiny snapshot into this aspect of a transgender’s life reveal this, I am firmly convinced religion has pushed a few too far, into the realm of suicide.

Just my opinion and two cent’s worth.

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Well, a google search of “religion and suicide risk” turned up some interesting articles, both pro and con. Also, a google search of “Christianity and LGBTQ suicides” had some compelling results for there being a harmful link in many of those cases. Just from my own observations religion does contain some very comforting lies for those willing to buy into it, but also has some very harmful aspects directed at those who don’t.

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Suicides accociated with Christianity? Man that’s a huge problem; how dare they give people hope and purpose. You guys really ought to send out some atheist missionaries to reassure the teens searching for purpose that they are just meaningless animals in a meaningless universe, and they will be just another dead monkey in a few years come. That will make them feel much better.

Your life is what you make of it, not what someone else dictates.

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@Cr2187 Sure. Go ahead and downplay it. That’s a real good fucking attitude to have, bro. It’s not healthy to force your beliefs down other people’s throats and expect great results. Especially kids who want nothing to do with their parents superstitions when it causes mental and emotional abuse. But you wouldn’t know anything about that would you?

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I dunno, but I thought the Australian Royal Commission on Institutional Response to Child Abuse laid the dead chook fairly and squarely at those churches that covered up and/or actively encouraged child abuse in all its forms leading to adolescent and adult suicides…

But then our esteemed CR1287 would not have been allowed to read its findings I guess…Or if he did he would adopt some sort of pull rope that would allow him to spin some other tale rather than approaching the evidential findings as they are.

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Well asshole. Knew a 14 year old who “played sick” so she didn’t have to go to church Sunday with her folks.

She hung herself while they were there.

High control religion. She wanted to live this life. Fuck the fantasy of “what’s to come”…

Her mom’s response?
Comforted by the thought she’d see her in “the future”. Sickening spiritual shit.

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Well I think you have outdone yourself with this fatuous straw man. No Atheist I have ever known, communicated with, read about, or observed, has ever postulated that there is no meaning in existence in a meaningless universe. Quite the contrary in that most ,even slightly educated individuals, recognize the reality that meaning is something humans assign based on their understanding and ability to accept demonstrable facts about our present conditions… It is striking that you prefer the idea of false hope and borrowed meaning to assuage the fears and anxieties that many teens experience. This is very revealing and confirming of the observable, demonstrable facts of the real psychological impact and often damage which is the consequence of the indoctrination and mind control so conspicuous in Christianity at large.

By all means it is all about how they “feel”. Clearly you believe as you do because it makes you “feel” a certain way, not because you think it is true. This is very common among Christians, especially those who have such limited life experiences that they cannot see the obvious problems with emotional “tethering” to belief.
Avoiding the truth with young people often has disastrous effects, frequently lasting a lifetime, including the short lifetime of those unable to deal with the incoherent explanations for very real issues and physiological changes as often proffered up by religion. When any person, young or old, is unable to separate their own emotional response from the observable truth of the stimuli, intellectual analysis becomes impossible and learning is stymied. Now comes the programmed responses such as you have delivered herein ad nauseam.

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As an ex-paramedic, I have a lot (a whole lot!) to say about an association between religion and suicide . . . especially teen suicide

A common theme in religious households is that if someone is depressed, conflicted, struggling with substance abuse, or anxious, then it’s because they don’t go to church enough.

Attached to this is the shame and stigma associated with suicide in many faiths, which means that people will avoid asking for help when they need it. I would also add that a disproportionate number of adolescent LGBTQ people have been (often violently) disowned by their Christian families. These cast-off kids become rich fodder for pimps and human traffickers, which–of course–leads to drug abuse, depression, and suicide.

There seems to be the idea that salvation through Jesus can fix everything, so–conversely–it’s a matter of common sense that anyone suffering mental health problems must not be praying enough . . . or, at least, in a sincere enough manner. This puts us in a space where these issues become the sufferer’s fault, so they brought these things on themselves.

In other words, people choose to have mental health issues by not fixing it with prayer and God’s guidence.

When they die by suicide, they deserve what they get.

It’s bad enough when this is a religious belief exercised by those within the religion.

BUT what the Texas GOP is doing IS authorizing this backward superstitious behaviour into their political platform. FOR all TEXANS.

Gays are “abnormal”.

ONE of many “policies” the fundies, Christian Nationalists - are reverting, regressing, regurgitating. They are building their Theocratic Government.

Texas teens are human beings. They deserve freedom, equality, dignity, choice.

Keep religion and state separate.

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Agree 100%. Texas is turning into a theocracy.

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I have already heard an apt description for this … Texas Taliban.

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Oh look, the mythology fanboy is posting drivel and snarky ad hominem again.

First of all, it is WE HUMANS who decide what purpose our lives have, and the evidence overwhelmingly points to this, NOT to a cartoon magic man from a goat herder mythology. Which has only ever been asserted to exist

Second, do learn some elementary concepts that apply here, such as the fact that humans aren’t “monkeys” (which form two separate clades anyway), but are great apes belonging to the Family Hominidae. The evidence from both palaeontology and molecular phylogeny point to this.

Indeed, Linnaeus wanted to classify humans and chimpanzees in the same taxonomic Genus, on the basis of comparative anatomy, fully 62 years before Darwin was born. The reason he didn’t was because of religious interference in his science, about which he lamented in a letter to fellow taxonomist Johann Georg Gmelin in 1747.

Indeed, that letter survives to this day, and can be viewed here.

Better to teach our youth verifiable fact instead of mythological lies.

Oh, and those of us who paid attention in science classes, learned that the universe is far grander and far more majestic, than asserted to be the case by the piss-stained Bronze Age nomads that scribbled your shitty mythology. We’ve learned that it’s fully nine orders of magnitude larger, and at least seven orders of magnitude older, than is asserted to be the case in your worthless book of fairy tales.

Indeed, scientists have alighted upon vast classes of entities and interactions, that the authors of your mythology were incapable of even fantasising about. Those same scientists have placed said classes of entities and interactions into usefully predictive quantitative frameworks of knowledge, of a sort that those authors of your mythology would have regarded as magic.

The sociopathic nomads that scribbled your mythology, thought genetics was controlled by coloured sticks, and were too stupid to count correctly the number of legs that an insect possesses.

As for your verminous little religion being a source of “hope”, don’t make me laugh. In several places, your mythology explicitly states that the central tenet thereof consists of “kill all who do not conform”, and the authors thereof devoted over 200 pages of their scribblings to gleeful depictions of genocidal Lebensraum wars and sex trafficking of underage girls.

Oh, and the only “purpose” your shitty little religion offers, is the opportunity to spend eternity kissing the arse of a cosmic Donald Trump in a celestial North Korea.

On the other hand, those of us who paid attention in class, offer the opportunity to learn about how reality actually operates, and the wonders that arise from the requisite diligent study.

But you summarily dismiss all those hard-won diligent scientific discoveries, just because they don’t genuflect before your shitty goat herder mythology and its farcical assertions.

Though on the matter of said scientific discoveries, you’ve had your arse cheeks handed to you so often, that you probably walk sideways as a result.

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Don’t be shy . . . tell us how you really feel!

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I don’t have any particular stats or numbers to contribute, but I have anecdotal experience that may be relevant.

When I was a paramedic, parents tended to blame a child’s depression on “Not praying hard enough” or “Not going to church enough” because if you have a proper relationship with God, then you have no reason to be depressed.

Or depression was seen as a form of malingering and/or a lack of character. This was the view of my parents (even though they weren’t religious), and I still contend with similar thinking today when I struggle with my autism while going to nursing school.

My paramedic experience seems to show an increase in suicide associated with religion when parents don’t get treatment and/or medication for the depressed child, so I believe that religion contributes to suicide when religion facilitates denial of a mental health issue.

In my case, my autism interferes with personal relationships, and loneliness coupled with a lack of positive human relationships and a lack of emotional intimacy has often led to me being frequently depressed during several periods of my life, although I haven’t been suicidal.

When I’ve tried to talk to people about this (who happen to be religious), a frequent answer is to “go to church and cultivate a personal relationship with Jesus, and then you’ll never be alone.”

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://ps.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ps.201900005&ved=2ahUKEwiP9KbT4buCAxWiQTABHb-LDZkQFnoECBsQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1Yvf-YJ-O2w2ZWjHhw23P6

I can see how religion can contribute to suicide when we consider these ideas, although I don’t have hard numbers to offer . . . and I must also point out that we routinely trash anecdotal evidence on this forum, so I (in the spirit of intellectual honesty) encourage you guys to be extra skeptical toward the points I made in this post.

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I consider this kind of reply ignorant, insulting and infuriating. Ignorant because (as you present it) they seem to have absolutely no insight into the causality of it all; insulting because they downplay and ignore your own feelings that you describe to them, effectively adding insult to injury; and infuriating because of all of the above, and because that kind of response is simply stupid and reeks of social incompetence.

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Thank you for the validation.

I see a lot of this thinking in the medical field, and when I’m an RN, I will do my part to work on this issue.

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