The suicide rate for kids ages 10-14 nearly tripled in the past decade. Why? And what can we do?

Image by Arifur Rahman Tushar from Pixabay

I was 10 when my uncle Doug took his own life. I remember my mom getting the phone call and watching her slump down the kitchen wall, hand over her mouth. I remember her having to tell my dad to come home from work so she could tell him that his beloved baby brother had hung himself.

Doug had lived with us for a while. He was kind, gentle, and funny. He was only 24 when he died.

My uncle was so young—too young—but not as young as some who end their lives. Youth suicide in the U.S. is on the rise, and the numbers—and ages—are staggering.

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The American Psychological Association says bigotry and gun laws are to blame for mass shootings, not 'mental illness'

Any time a mass shooting occurs in America—which is basically every week at this point—hoards of people start blaming "mental health." Despite the fact that every other developed nation also has people with mental illnesses and nowhere near our mass shooting numbers, mental health becomes the scapegoat for people who insist that gun violence has nothing to do with guns.

On the surface, it may seem like a plausible enough theory. After all, no one in a sane state of mind walks into a concert, a shopping center, or a place of worship and starts shooting people randomly. Such folks are clearly not right in the head, so "mental health" seems like a logical place to go.

RELATED: Twice as many American children die from gun violence as police officers and soldiers combined

But according to the American Psychological Association—the actual experts in mental health—that blame is misplaced. Instead, they say, the toxic combination of "easy access to assault weapons and hateful rhetoric" and the "negative cognitive and behavioral effects" of racism are the ills that we really need to be addressing if we want to stop mass killings.

APA President Rosie Phillips Davis, PhD, released the following statement on the shootings in El Paso and Dayton. It's worth reading in full:

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Do you have the 'sorry' reflex? Barbie — yes, that Barbie — has some advice.

Did you know Barbie has a vlog? Until today, I didn't.

Since June 2015, the Mattel collectable icon has posted a bi-weekly blog to her (I'm not quite sure what pronouns to use for the video version of a doll, so I'll just go with "she" and "her" for the sake of simplicity) YouTube page. In the 60 episodes since, she's discussed meditation, how to deal with bullies, what to do when "jokes" go too far, empowerment, sadness, and being assertive.

I. Had. No. Idea. This. Existed.

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Yale's most popular class ever is all about happiness — and you can take it for free.

When I think of classes at Yale University, I imagine things like organic chemistry and 19th-century literature. I don’t picture Happiness 101.

As it turns out, the class Psychology and the Good Life, colloquially dubbed Happiness 101, is Yale’s most popular course offering — ever. Approximately 1 in 4 undergrads enrolled in the class for spring semester. That’s nearly 1,200 students — the largest enrollment reported for a single class in Yale’s 317-year history.

Spring on the Yale campus. Photo via Christopher Capozzielo/Getty Images.

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