Suicides in adolescence: psychic effects of impasses in the social bond

Abstract

This article is part of a larger research that interrogates suicide in adolescence and its relationship with contemporary social impasses, based on the fact that it currently constitutes the second leading cause of death among young people worldwide. Starting from a bibliographical review on the topic, it aims to analyze two clinical cases involving suicide attempts in adolescence treated at an outpatient clinic to children and teenagers, based on the psychoanalytic theoretical framework. We maintain that the psychic effects of impasses in the social bond to which young people/adolescents are subjected interfere with the very meaning of life and existence, being associated with the fading of otherness, as well as the impossibility of narrating the anguish and helplessness in which they find themselves, often manifests itself in body and in action. Suicidal acts, so recurrent in adolescence today, can be situated in the paradigm of the subject’s discomfort in contemporary times in the face of the decline of the Other in culture and Education.