REPORT: Ten Percent of D.C. Public Schools' 8th Graders Have Considered or Attempted Suicide

A shocking report was released by Washington D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson on Tuesday, which paints a bleak statistic that 10 percent of the school system's 4,000 eighth graders have considered or attempted suicide.

Chancellor Kaya Henderson sketched a bleak statistical picture of life in DCPS middle schools at Tuesday’s D.C. Council hearing, including a chilling survey finding that 10 percent of the school system’s 4,000 eighth graders have tried to kill themselves.

Henderson and other officials said they do not take the figure at face value. It is self-reported by students who filled out the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey administered last fall by OSSE. They said they regard it more as a reflection of the despair that often pervades their world, and of an on-line culture in which stories and images of teen suicide are readily accessible.

“They’re exposed to the Internet, to Facebook. They’re exposed to so many more things than we were,” said D.C. State Superintendent of Education Hosanna Mahaley. “Things we didn’t think about until well in our adult years.” But even allowing for the adolescent sense of drama and hyperbole, the figure is sobering.

The statistics paint a really grim picture of how some of our youths view the world around them. Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/dc-schools-insider/post/middle-school-survey-sex-fear-and-suicide-attempts/2011/09/27/gIQAKwz92K_blog.html?hpid=z3