Suicide

Suicide

Quotes
These data demand studies to evaluate the harmful effects of infant formula milk upon brain development and behavior compared to breastfeeding for "two years of age or beyond" and to evaluate the history of duration of breastfeeding in child and youth suicides and those with a history of depression and psychiatric medication. The NIH, inexplicably, refuses to conduct these studies. [2002] The Origins of Love & Violence: An Overview by James W. Prescott, Ph.D.

The report of the NICHD (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development) Study of Early Child Care (SECC) found that infants and very young children who spend more than 30 hours a week in child care "are far more demanding, more noncompliant, and they are more aggressive" and "They scored higher on things like gets in lots of fights, cruelty, bullying, meanness as well as talking too much, demands must be met immediately", according to Dr.Belsky, one of the principle investigators" (Stolberg, New York Times, April 19, 2001) (emphasis mine)
Dr. Sarah Friedman, NICHD Scientific Project Officer was reported as saying ""We cannot and should not hide the findings but I don't want to create a mass hysteria when I don't know what explains these results" (Stolberg, 2001). Unfortunately, no measures of biological stress disorders were incorporated into this study nor was there any awareness of the early NICHD studies in the 1960s and 1970s, which documented these behaviors in the maternally deprived young. [2002] The Origins of Love & Violence: An Overview by James W. Prescott, Ph.D.

It has yet to be recognized that cruelty, bullying and meanness that terrorizes so many of our children and youth in our elementary schools and high schools have their roots in the emotional trauma of mother-infant/child separations associated with institutionalized day care and from other separations These collective emotional-social traumas are sufficiently great to establish an unstable brain that combined with other stress experiences compels many students to despair and the violent acts of homicide and suicide. It is estimated that some 20% of our nation's students have contemplated suicide at one time or another (Moran, 2000; Silverman, et al 200l; Prescott, 2001). What is wrong with America and American families that drive so many of our youth to depression, despair and suicide? [2002] The Origins of Love & Violence: An Overview by James W. Prescott, Ph.D.

Unfortunately, the road that gained insight into the developmental mechanisms that mediate the aggressive, noncompliant and other disordered emotional-social behaviors, e.g. depression and suicide consequent to mother-infant/child separations-- which was illuminated by the Time Life documentary "Rock a Bye Baby"-- was blocked and terminated by the NICHD in the late 1970s. The NICHD unlawfully abandoned its agency responsibility to continue to support research on the causes and consequences of violence against children and failed to recommend implementation of national health programs for the prevention of this violence. These unlawful NICHD/NIH actions has not only set-back scientific advances in this field for over a quarter of a century but more importantly has resulted in the epidemics of depression, drug abuse, psychiatric medications and violence that characterizes this nation today with a substantial loss of child and youth life due to suicidal and homicidal deaths that are mostly preventable. [2002] The Origins of Love & Violence: An Overview by James W. Prescott, Ph.D.

This issue of duration of breastfeeding for optimal biological and mental-social health is particularly urgent when it is recognized that only 6.8% of American mothers are breastfeeding at 12 months; 2.7% are breastfeeding at 24months; and only 1% at 30 months or more (Hediger, 2001; Prescott, 2001). These statistics on breastfeeding become even more alarming in the light of child and youth suicidal deaths which have doubled in the 5-14 year age group over this past generation and has been the third leading cause of death in the 15-24 year age group over this past generation. Further, for the 5-14 year age group the ratio of suicide rates to homicide rates have consistently increased over this past generation, as follows: 1979--36 %; 1994--60%; 1998--73%. It is also a sobering statistic to note that more children and youth (5-24 year age group) have died from suicidal death in the past ten years (est 55,000) than combat lives lost during the ten year Vietnam War (47, 355). Yet, no memorial has been established for these children of suicidal death. [2002] The Origins of Love & Violence: An Overview by James W. Prescott, Ph.D.