According to a CDC report, nearly 15 percent of Hispanic female teenagers in NYC tried to commit suicide in 2008, compared with 10 percent of all city high school girls. In particular, Brooklyn had a 21 percent rate of suicide attempts among teen Latinas. Officials are now trying to figure out why exactly that is...but we're wondering why they're only trying to figure this out now.
The City Council Committee on Women's Issues is holding a hearing on the issue Monday, in a meeting titled, "Oversight: Exploring the Availability of Suicide Prevention services for Adolescent Latinas in NYC." Rosa Gil, who runs the program Life is Precious for suicidal Hispanic girls in Brooklyn and the Bronx, told the News that officials are perplexed as to the statistics—she said there aren't high rates of suicide in their mother countries, which leads her to believe it has to do with their experiences here.
Some officials point to a disconnect between single working mothers and their Americanized daughters: "The mothers say, 'No, no, I didn't date boys, I didn't stay out late,' and the daughter wants to behave like an American girl. The conflicts escalate, and the adolescents feel like there is a bleak life ahead for them," said Gil. There are other problems escalating in the community as well: another CDC report found that Hispanics accounted for 17 percent of new HIV infections, and the rate of new infections in 2006 was 2.5 times that of whites. But if the numbers are as bleak and unique to Hispanics as they are made out to be, why is this only being confronted now, two years after the last study was done?
