Suicide rates for young Australians double in a decade This report on ABC News yesterday, ‘Suicide rates for young Australians highest in 10 years, researchers call for new prevention strategies’, reveals the distressing situation regarding the numbers of young people wanting to end their lives. In my talks in schools around the country, young people […]
‘The glamorising and approval of teen girl audiences of the captioned desire to depart from life is surely one of the most dangerous digital conversations unfolding today’ These postings provide a snapshot of the Instagram dialogue trending amongst Australian adolescent girls. It is a virtual battleground of life and death on the popular image-sharing […]
The Hunt family murder-suicide. This is what needs to be said. Nina Funnell perfectly echoes my own thoughts on the murder of a mother and three children by their husband and father. By NINA FUNNELL Trigger warning: This post deals with violence against women and children, suicide and other distressing topics. It may be triggering […]
Sexting, Shame and Suicide: a shocking story of sexual assault in the digital age This essay was published last September but I’ve only just come across it. I keep thinking of Audrie and her body defaced and graffitied, the images shared and consumed. Her waking in horror to discover the markings all over her body […]
Miley recently cited Irish singer Sinead O’Connor as an influence for her Wrecking Ball video. O’Connor begged to differ. Here’s what she wrote in an open letter on her website: Dear Miley, I wasn’t going to write this letter, but today i’ve been dodging phone calls from various newspapers who wished me to remark […]
The two most important articles in this issue are on anxiety and the importance of sleep. Anxiety appears to be a plague on our girls right now. ‘Feeling anxious? How to deal when your worries take over your life’ looks at the symptoms of anxiety and how to recognise when it is impacting on your […]
‘There was no discussion of the pressure girls like Amanda experience to measure their worth through their sexual desirability’ By Meghan Murphy The tragic story of Amanda Todd has been covered widely by the media and has impacted people across the continent. Todd was only fifteen years old when she killed herself last Wednesday after […]
One suicide is a tragedy. But what happens when a community is rocked by a series of suicides, one after another, all of them young people? Do the families mourn in private, fearful that expressing their grief publicly could result in more deaths? Or does the community come together, so that individual families can tell […]
And making fun of suffering: does Girlfriend want to be seen as a mean girl? [Self harm trigger warning. If you need help, contact Suicide Prevention Australia ] So, we’ve just marked World Suicide Prevention Day. World Suicide Prevention Day on 10 September promotes worldwide commitment and action to prevent suicides. On average, almost 3000 […]
Since my last piece on the cyberbullying taking place through Facebook, other sites targeting girls for their alleged flaws have been found. One identifying young women not considered “marriage material”. Another naming and shaming ‘12-year-old sluts’. Another for girls labelled “bitches”. British girl Poppy Bracey recently took her life as a result of a cyber bullying campaign […]
“Relentless in their efforts to demean her.” “Persistent and vicious.” “Aggressive and intimidating.” These are some of the descriptions of the physical and emotional bullying Brodie Panlock was subjected to by the four men convicted and fined for their role in her suicide. That’s them (clockwise from top left): Marc Luis Da Cruz, Nicholas Smallwood, […]
I can’t stop thinking about Brodie Panlock. Brodie was 19 when she took her life following unrelenting bullying at the Melbourne café where she worked as a waitress. This is what the men at her workplace did to her: They poured fish oil into her bag and in her hair and clothes. They called her […]
