Imagine a child who gets bullied in school regularly eventually can't take it anymore and kills themselves.
Are you really so callous as to say, "there's nobody to blame here but the child"
Are you really so callous as to say, "there's nobody to blame here but the child"
Kids were bullied generations ago, yet it is only recently that bullying and suicide became a national crisis. What changed? Are bullies more aggressive than they were back then, or are more kids deciding that suicide is the answer, or were suicides related to bullying not reported?
It's still par for the course, at least where I live, for media to use the code "Police say there were no suspicious circumstances" instead of baldly reporting the fact of a suicide.
Reported rates were lower because of this.
Newspapers understood better their responsibility to be careful about reporting suicide; the Werther effect is real and has killed people.
Children's rights are a relatively recent phenomenon. Bullying used to be seen as character forming or as an unstoppable part of childhood.
The extreme end of bullying is more severe now. And bullies have access to technology which extends the bullying from the school to the bullied person's wider life.
tl;dr yes, there is more awareness, and more reporting, and the bullying is worse, and more children choosing suicide.
Suicide has also always existed; we just care more now.