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Articoli

No. 1 (2016)

The suicide in adolescence and in the early youth

  • Nella Guidi
DOI
https://doi.org/10.53262/caleido.1.2019.1-24
Submitted
March 27, 2016
Published
2019-04-21

Abstract

In countries with high economic development, the rapid and non-psychologicallyintegrated enforcement of the new rights recently acquired by individuals seems to have influenced their psychological structures, and therefore also their approach to suicide. Women’s acquired right to study and pursue a professional career, the right of abortion and divorce, as well as the possibility of in-utero genetic manipulation – fuelling fantasies of omnipotence/impotence – have rapidly changed customs and morality, triggering an extreme stimulation of the most preconscious anxieties of self-and-object-destruction. The present variability of the possible roles in society facilitates – in the individuals, often through impulsive activity – the disguise of the intrapsychic condition of self-passiveness (Rapaport). The destructive behaviour arising from the difficulty in self-control – such as an increase of juvenile delinquency, of self and etero-mutilations, and also suicide attempts – is too often accepted as a consequence of rational actions. At present, existential crises frequently reveal themselves in the most dramatic and essential way – an unexpected suicide under conditions of apparent well-being. As far as international literature goes, the groups with a higher risk of mortal suicide – apart from the category of adolescents and young adults, classically referred to this way – are those of people separated, divorced, and adopted, as well as seniors – especially those of male sex. These are the individuals that during their life have usually suffered more role losses. Given the potential associated with every life crisis towards reaching a better structural equilibrium – regarding synthesis and integration – a crisis-intervention becomes of critical importance especially for those risk groups. A short-time psychotherapeutical intervention – with main objective the hic-et-nunc problems of aggressiveness in the therapeutical relation – is fundamental, so that the most preconscious anxieties of self- and object-destruction can be better tolerated and opposed.