By John R. Hernandez, Jr.
"The subject of teen suicide is a tragic one, as well as drug abuse and child abuse. But, the topic of misdiagnosis and clinical over sedation and or over-prescribing sedatives to young children I feel is the cause of many of societal problems; which can often go drasticaly undereported. We can point the finger of blame in every direction when it comes to our children. But, are we prepared to face the challenges of a festering apathetic environment, which has led to a culture of homelessnes, drug abuse, self mutilations, violence, psychotic dysfunctions and broken families?"
When I left my family, my home and Rutgers to come chasing after my girlfriend and my baby boy she’d taken with her to come to Georgia. I felt I was doing the right thing a father should do. Little did I know the effect of walking away on my education and family would have on my life. But what leads me to this story today is not exactly that part of my life- however painful and tragic- in many ways. But it’s the subject of teen suicide and the real effect one person had on my life after having chosen one of her titles for a classroom assignment back at Rutgers. As you all know, Rutgers is the state university of 'good old New Jersey'. My, how things have changed up there since I’ve been away and, I might add, the South sure has grown on me. I don’t miss it so much anymore though I do miss the Jersey shore trips and of course the times I spent in the Big Apple. Now to get back to the subject at hand; teen suicide. It was a class I’d taken back at school that brought it all to my attention and let me tell you Donna Gaines left and indelible impression on my mind with her profound research and her insightful book titled Teenage Wasteland. In fact I have written about her and her book -in short- on some websites just to comment on what a good book and what a great writer researcher she is and the movie behind the book. I saw the movie about this topic in class which went a little further and was more colorful than the book in some ways but nevertheless the subject was ingrained at least in my mind back in that classroom that day. The movie and the book revolve around a group of kids (adolescents) teenagers and young adults who hailed from an area of Jersey called Bergenfield otherwise known as the Cliffs. The book is about their small Jersey community, a picturesque mountainside landscape overlooking that part of the Big Apple called the Upper West Side across the Hudson. I think the subject of teen suicide is a tragic one as well as drug abuse and child abuse. But, the topic of misdiagnosis and clinical over sedation and or over-prescribing sedatives to young children, I feel is the cause of many of societal problems; which can often go drasticaly undereported. We can point the finger of blame in any direction when it comes to our children. But are we prepared to face the challenges of a festering apathetic environment which has led to a culture of homelessnes, drug abuse, self mutilations, violence, psychotic dysfunctions and broken families? While in her book she points mostly to a suicide pact between four teenagers. In adittion, Donna Gaines book titled "Teenage Wasteland" also touches on the subject of family dysfunctionality. But, my question is, "what else but the death of a loved one like the death of one of their teenage friends would lead a group of youngsters to lock themselves in a car and inhale poisonous fumes?" Of all the research I've done I have not seen where drug oversedation has been given any attention when it comes to tragedies surrounding the question of why children do things that leave many of us asking, "So they just got depressed and decided to commit suicide, just for the hell of it?" The subject of drug abuse and its connection to broken homes, fatherless homes, motherless homes and children living on the margins of society’s peripheral vision are the reasons why epidemics of suicide happen and yes even in small enclaves like up in the hills of Bergenfield. I can't help but feel that there is more to teen suicide than what some people report and perhaps we will never know. Donna Gaines points out that some children came from what is termed dysfunctional families (single parent households, etc.) and some of these children had trouble focusing in class or adapting; since the school they went to was an upper middle class type and these children felt out of place. Some were harassed by other peers at school and were made to feel less than worthy as individuals. They were for the most part intelligent children and in fact some had come from better than usual low income families. But, however you slice it once they began to slack off in school and integrate into the lower subgroups. Why, were they shunned by their peer groups, in the community at large and especially by officials and or those who saw them as outcasts? All of this caused them to form their own micro-community, which the dominant-culture of mistrust condoned.
It wasn’t unusual for them to be physically hurt or abused by those who labeled them undesirables. Eventually some became homeless and lived in vacant run down homes, perhaps these where the same vacant homes some of them had been evicted from in the past or were just abandoned as people moved on. In the movie you can see how these kids had created an extended family were they all looked out for each other. Some of them were on some type medication. And this leads me to ask, "Why isn't the topic of over sedation of many of our children gone so underreported?" I am not saying that this is what happened up in Bergenfield, but what led to the suicides of four children and then upwards of 35 that followed nationwide certainly had some connection to drug abuse. It’s a bad situation when school officials cannot find ways to get a grip on what’s really happening to the lives of the children they are entrusted with. I am not blaming the school system but, as a cog in the wheel that helps to churn out or which hopes to turn out healthy and mentally fit youngsters. Out into society at large one would think primary and secondary institutions of education would have some working models on how to treat children who through no fault of their own are forced to live and participate in a society where they are labeled dysfunctional, deviant, malicious, and often perhaps even incoherent. I was never sedated thank God, but I sure did sleep through most of my elementary and high school years. Like many of these children, I too came from a broken household -a single parent home. But,I guess I was one of the lucky ones that could have turned out to be some basket case had the school system or some school psychologist decided to medicate me as perhaps some children are; without first investigating the root causes. What is actually going on in their lives and perhaps finding out that their condition is a result of their familial setting or situation and not due to any acute mental illness. Some people out there have come up with their own conclusions about what really happened up in the Bergenfield, New Jersey and some say it was just the domino effect of one kid’s death as a result of falling from the Cliffs. While, Donna Gaines personal investigation and the movie behind it may have shown us more to that which some point to as a state of depression which helped to create a culture of suicide and deaths, in this sleepy little town. My memories of Bergenfield and traveling through the Cliffs were of these clean manicured laid back suburban communities I would pass through on my way to West New York and other places in this picturesque mountainside landscapes. What I took away from the book and the movie was how the upper class citizens of this community appeared to suppress things and make the lives of these children and others from the lower strata of these neighborhoods unbearable and unlivable at times. It’s not unlike any other community in America were two cultures of society clash amongst each other, those of the uppity class and those of the less fortunate and outcasts. The one driving point that came through for me from Donna Gaines investigation as she assimilated with these so-called lower class children and as she lived among them in their own neighborhood was that she got to see a lot more than any of us care to see or want to, about the lives of one community which can be duplicated across the ever merging sub-urban American landscapes. This a story about how we as a society often turn our backs on those we choose to label dysfunctional and who -may- often end up being prescribed unnecessary doses of drugs to control their behavior and who
-may- even be placed into mental institutions. Simply because we just give up on them and feel threatened by their attitudes and temperaments. Out of sight -out of mind! These are the children of our neighbors, across the street or down the block that otherwise would have turned out just fine if we had made better choices; if our chosen officials had done their jobs and not just decided to pass the problem on to someone else down the ladder of failure and institutional hopelessness. Donna Gaines made a strong impression on the American society, as a whole. But, in my mind I took away more than a suicide pact as she indirectly alluded to aspects of what really may have been going on up in the Cliffs of Jersey back in the eighties. Today, teenage suicide is trending upward once again and not just in the ghettoes of America, in particular, but in some over diagnosed and over medicated cultures where teenagers are branded as outcasts; where some young girls today have been known to commit suicide as a result of this new craze of "Sexting". Which is when you get a hold of a young girls nude or explicit pictures and text them to all your friends or put them on the net for all to see. The recent problems of "Bullying" and or "Sexting" that have been known to lead to teenage suicide- are not going to go away anytime soon. Effects of negative stereotypes and the psychosocial branding of cultural subgroups which is much easier than rolling up your sleeves and trying to get to the true root of the problem. The aftermath of the swelling of seperation and divorce cases adding to the epidemic of single family homes, runaways and teenage pregnancy. What the so-called nuclear family once stood for and the extended family came to be, has now morphed into the officaly accepted dysfunctional or broken single family home. Replete with the inadequacies of a strong and central father figure, a strong and central extended spiritual foundation and an overly prescribed government funded medical interventiion program. A plan which was doomed to fail from the beginning. Wether the child makes the choices or societal institutions make the choices the fact still remains that we have been left to face the aftermath of 50 years of cultural and societal colapse. Like a runaway locomotive on a collision course with impending doom, today's modern nuclear family has but completely self destructed. It is clear by the familial and structural patterns of data collected that this epidemic is rampant throughout all segments of society. The setting created from greater governmental intervention and community wide interaction has done little to stem the tide of broken families and dysfunctional relationships affecting the fragile makeup of single family homes leading to the medicaly accepted subculture of rampant prescribed and illicit drug abuse. It’s getting to be like children can’t seem to escape from all the drugs and violence out there on the streets. You could be sitting home doing your homework or having supper and a bullet could come flying through your window. It is like this in many low income neighborhoods out there. But who do we blame? Do we blame the mother who decided to take the kids and make it on her own and live the good life, free and clear; or do we blame the father who walks out on his family to chase some other relationship? Do we blame the school systems, the school boards or the school psychologists for not investigating further; before they start to hand out prescriptions and over-sedate? Medication often given freely to them by anxious pharmaceutical industry marketers. Do we blame the police for not doing enough to patrol and make their presence known on campus in these children’s lives, from day to day; as a support system for many who are actually most vulnerable and hurting? Do we blame the government when it doesn’t take a stronger approach in providing proper support mechanisms to single parent households and or adequate programs that could address issues of dysfunctionality and family depression and or as a result of the pressures poverty inflicts on single households? Do we blame the illicit drug industry and the alcohol industry for creating a culture of drug dependency, abuse and violence -right in the same neighborhoods low income children play and learn? Do we blame the pornography industry for creating a culture where sex and being sensual is the in-thing and okay- to- do because these children are just individuals. Like my ex told me back in 2008 when she commented on the possibility that if I got to see my kids I might try to change them from the way she had been raising them? Or do we blame the church for creating a culture of apathy when its own priests can’t be trusted with our children and these kids can’t seem to find someone to lean on or a shoulder to cry on? Yes, these children are individuals; but, they do need to be hugged, to be nurtured. And to have their father there with them to read them a bed time story, to take them to the ball park, to sit with them, to help them with their homework and to help make them feel proud and loved. When love is thrown out the window, because of your own selfish attitude -your children become alienated- and the only vacuum left for them is to navigate towards the only outlets left for them. To vent out there frustrations and anger over why life has turned out so bad for them. "Cutting" is not something new, even back in the eighties when Donna Gaines wrote her book it was popular and still is. Self mutilation, curiosity with the Occult and horoscopes, Black Magic, Witchcraft, Satanic Rituals, Voodoo, attraction with Ouija Boards, Clairvoyance, Vampirism and the cults so prevalent on television today. These are some of the outlets; the choices left for what my ex says are my children’s right to be individuals- according to her.
I hope you found this to be helpful,
Don’t forget to stop by Mark Coker’s Smashwords.com website and purchase
my book “In the Birth of a New Dawn” and use code TK62P and or NL28E
to get your 20% discount. A book of poetry that speaks about love and loss and moving on.
"Children need to grow up in a world where they can learn more about love and coping with the reality of love not from the bandaid mentality of medical or illicit sedation but from the Godly and spiritual foundations of learning to face reality one-day-at-a-time without the artificial inhibitors so prevalent within the framework of today's standard-treatment models."
John R. Hernandez, Jr.
The story of the a struggle a female goes through after being a victim of rape. A year and half later she has to fight a suspicious society that looks at her as if she is stained with shame
Make the Call!!
I am grateful to Change.org for allowing us at New Dawn Media Communications to post -this near and dear issue to all our hearts- on their petition drive candidate pages. They have been so supportive and helpful in this endeavor. We realize that this petition drive is a huge step beyond the envelope, but this issue, as well as so many others has needed our attention for far too long now. In the end it’s not what you take with you but what you leave behind.
Thanks,
John R. Hernandez, Jr. and Your New Dawn Team
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