DR. WALLACE: You said that teens have the second highest rate of suicide among any other age group. Do you know of any studies that back up the theory that teens have a high rate of suicides? Sure, a few teens take their own lives, but ranking them as second highest is hard to believe. I don't doubt your information, I just find it unrealistic. Teens have their entire adult life before them. I'm 16 and love my life. — Hanna, Washington, D.C.

HANNA: For some young people, the teen years can be the most trying and painful times in their lives. Teens, including you, are trying to establish an identity, learning to operate independently, growing physically and intellectually, choosing a career and developing love relationships. Some succeed while others, for a myriad of reasons, fail and failure can be emotionally devastating. A leading cause of emotional trauma are impossible demands placed on teens by parents who then reject them for failing to live up to parental expectations and that makes the teen feel worthless.

When a teen commits suicide, family factors are the commonly cited cause. Death, divorce, alcoholism, drug abuse and child abuse add to teen loneliness and depression.

Researchers at the University of Southern California interviewed 6,000 teens who had attempted suicide and compared their life histories with those of a group of teens who had never tried suicide.

The self-destructive teens had a much higher percentage of parents who had divorced, separated or remarried within the past five years. Multiple separations — being shunted from relatives to foster homes, missing the support of parents — deprived the suicide-prone teens of the love and nurturing every child needs.

The study traced the path to suicide from family problems to a second stage — school failures, truancy, loneliness and depression.

In the third and final phase, the teen tries to fasten onto someone. This relationship is so clinging, so smothering, that it can't last. When it fails, the teen feels hopeless and isolated. He or she thinks there is only one solution left: self-destruction.

DON'T BLAME MARIJUANA FOR SHOPLIFTING

DR. WALLACE: Last weekend I smoked marijuana for the first time with my best friend. We really got high and decided to go to the mall and hang out. It took half an hour for us to walk there. The first thing we did was to buy and eat two large bags of potato chips because we had the munchies.

Then we went into a department store in Peoria and decided to steal some clothes, but we were arrested outside the store. The police took us to the police station. They called our parents who came down and picked us up. Now I'm in big trouble because I'm 17 and the store might press charges.

This is my problem: I wouldn't have been involved in shoplifting if I hadn't been under the influence of marijuana. If I told my parents about using pot, I'd be in even more trouble, but at least they would know why their daughter did something that she never would have done if she hadn't been high. — Nameless, Galesburg, Ill.

NAMELESS: Smoking marijuana is unhealthy and can be blamed for some other things, but not for your shoplifting spree. You took clothes without paying because you wanted to and being high had no influence in the theft.

Dr. Robert Wallace welcomes questions from readers. Although he is unable to reply to all of them individually, he will answer as many as possible in this column. Email him at [email protected]. To find out more about Dr. Robert Wallace and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: E-cig Twigg