ABSTRACT
Suicides are extremely distressing at any age but there is something particularly tragic about adolescent suicide. Adolescence is a time of the achievement of much greater competence and independence. Adolescents have arrived at a point in their lives when they can make their own mistakes and learn from them. Even when adolescents break down, interventions can begin which can help young people to try to make better decisions about themselves and see where they have gone wrong. One of the more encouraging aspects of working with adolescents is that we can often feel that it is not too late and that they can have a chance to put things right. There is a sense of a whole life ahead without too many irreversible decisions, in contrast to older patients who can often only make the best of the situation they are in. When this sense of hope in the future is cruelly cut short by suicide it has a powerful effect on anyone involved with them. For parents and siblings it is devastating, even fatal, and can certainly produce effects which may never be recovered from, as can also to a lesser extent happen to the friends and peer group. For professionals too the effect can be very distressing as well as persecuting, particularly if inquiries become suffused with the blame and destructiveness of the suicidal state.
