Suicide attempt response?

Question

a teenager is in the hospital having swallowed a substantial amount of pills. the parents are there. how should they deal with their kid?

Answer 1

2 possible answers:  1 a brain transplant [ maybe from a cow, they don't commit suicide }   2  a BIGGER bottle of pills to do it right.

Answer 2

They should immediately consider taking their child to a psychologist or some sort of mental health therapist.  

Answer 3

Well, how they SHOULD deal with their kid is probably not how most parents would wind up actually dealing with them. A parent SHOULD react with love and support, and offer to help and try to find out what was wrong to make their child want to end their life in the first place.

The way a lot of parents react, is they become emotionally withdrawn. For a number of reasons. First, because they are in shock and don't know how to deal with the fact that their kid tried to take their own life. Second, because most parents actually LOVE their kids, it can be really difficult for them to see their kids go through painful times. Parents will draw back and become emotionally unresponsive  because they are afraid of how much it could hurt if they let themselves feel what is going on. Other parents go to the other end of the spectrum, and they get angry, because anger is easier to allow themselves to feel than sadness or pain.  

Answer 4

first the person should be in constant supervision. second is to change the mentality of that person by making it positive. here are some links that might help: http://www.wikihow.com/Special:LSearch?f...

http://www.wikihow.com/Special:LSearch?f...

family support should be on top.

Answer 5

Your parents were upset.  They were probably instructed by the social worker or psychologist in the hospital not to break down in front of you and cause you any additional stress.  Or perhaps they felt that it would be easier on you and on them if they didn't freak out about it in front of you and therefore didn't make you feel any sillier or upset.

To answer the original question, how should parents deal with their kids, I think that they should show their support but not break down in front of the kid, who obviously has enough stress and weight on his shoulders.  They should also seek help from a social worker or psychologist in the hospital to evaluate the teenager's mental state and to assess the likelihood of him trying it again.  I would hope that after the incident, once everyone is safe at home, they would act differently, by trying to involve themselves in the kid's life more and try to form a closer relationship where people talk about their problems instead of trying to find a permanent and deadly solution.