Overview

A rare study that transforms our understanding of why youth die by suicide, why youth suicide clusters happen, and how to stop themYouth suicide clusters have deeply unsettled communities in recent years. While clusters have been widely documented in the media, too little is known about why youth die by suicide, why youth suicide clusters happen, and how to stop them both.In Life under Pressure, Anna S. Mueller and Seth Abrutyn investigate the social roots of youth suicide and why certain places weather disproportionate incidents of adolescent suicides and suicide clusters. Through close examination of kids' lives in a community repeatedly rocked by youth suicide clusters, Mueller and Abrutyn reveal how the social worlds that youth inhabit and the various messages they learn in those spaces--about who they are supposed to be, mental illness, and help-seeking--shape their feelings about themselves and in turn their risk of suicide. With great empathy, Mueller and Abrutyn also identify the moments when adults unintentionally fail kids by not talking to them about suicide, teaching them how to seek help, or helping them grieve.Through stories of survival, resilience, and even rebellion, Mueller and Abrutyn show how social environments can cause suicide and how they can be changed to help kids discover a life worth living. By revealing what it is like to live and die in one community, Life under Pressure offers tangible solutions to one of the twenty-first century's most tragic public health problems.

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9780190847845

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Reviews

Life under Pressure told me more about what has gone wrong with the upper-income corners of American society than any book I've read in years. It is a devastating work of scholarship. * Malcolm Gladwell, author of Talking to Strangers and host of the Revisionist History podcast * In Life under Pressure, Mueller and Abrutyn artfully weave rigorous scholarship and compelling narrative to shed light on how one community understood and responded to youth suicide. With insights invaluable to parents, advocates, and professionals alike, this is undoubtedly the most transformative text on school-based youth suicide in the past decade. * Jonathan B. Singer, PhD, LCSW, Professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Social Work, Past-President of the American Association of Suicidology, and coauthor of the bestselling text Suicide in Schools: A Practitioner's Guide to Multi-level Prevention, Assessment, Intervention, and Postvention * This book is an essential read for parents, educators, policymakers, and mental health professionals. Through its gripping portraits of communities in crisis, it upends conventional wisdom about youth suicide and offers clear sociological strategies for alleviating psychological pain. * Jessica Calarco, PhD, author of Negotiating Opportunities: How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School * This is such a powerful must-read book on youth suicide, especially on how the social landscape can convey risk and protection for youth vulnerable to suicide. Everyone with an interest in suicide and its prevention should read this excellent, compelling, and compassionate book. * Professor Rory O'Connor, President of the International Association for Suicide Prevention and author of When It Is Darkest: Why People Die by Suicide and What We Can Do to Prevent It * This truly unique and in-depth study of the complexity of suicide highlights the importance of sociological methods. The authors have collected and collated countless hours of interviews and material to respectfully share the painful story of one community's extraordinary experience of multiple suicides over many years. With their efforts and words, suicide prevention seems possible. * Jill Harkavy-Friedman, PhD, SVP of Research, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention * Life under Pressure provides a vital intervention in the discussion of youth suicide prevention. The story of Poplar Grove tells us that the roots of suicide are social, which means that the solutions must be too. From empowering schools to be sites of systemic care, to asserting the need for young people to be included in discussions about loss and prevention, to highlighting the protective factor of shared grief, Anna Mueller and Seth Abrutyn provide a road map to a more hopeful future where the mental health of young people is supported not only individually but by the institutions and communities in which they live. * C.J. Pascoe, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Oregon and author of Nice Is Not Enough: Inequality and the Limits of Kindness at American High * An insightful, approachable exploration of a scourge of self-harm in an 'idyllic American town. * Kirkus *

Life under Pressure told me more about what has gone wrong with the upper-income corners of American society than any book I've read in years. It is a devastating work of scholarship. * Malcolm Gladwell, author of Talking to Strangers and host of the Revisionist History podcast * In Life under Pressure, Mueller and Abrutyn artfully weave rigorous scholarship and compelling narrative to shed light on how one community understood and responded to youth suicide. With insights invaluable to parents, advocates, and professionals alike, this is undoubtedly the most transformative text on school-based youth suicide in the past decade. * Jonathan B. Singer, PhD, LCSW, Professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Social Work, Past-President of the American Association of Suicidology, and coauthor of the bestselling text Suicide in Schools: A Practitioner's Guide to Multi-level Prevention, Assessment, Intervention, and Postvention * This book is an essential read for parents, educators, policymakers, and mental health professionals. Through its gripping portraits of communities in crisis, it upends conventional wisdom about youth suicide and offers clear sociological strategies for alleviating psychological pain. * Jessica Calarco, PhD, author of Negotiating Opportunities: How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School * This is such a powerful must-read book on youth suicide, especially on how the social landscape can convey risk and protection for youth vulnerable to suicide. Everyone with an interest in suicide and its prevention should read this excellent, compelling, and compassionate book. * Professor Rory O'Connor, President of the International Association for Suicide Prevention and author of When It Is Darkest: Why People Die by Suicide and What We Can Do to Prevent It * This truly unique and in-depth study of the complexity of suicide highlights the importance of sociological methods. The authors have collected and collated countless hours of interviews and material to respectfully share the painful story of one community's extraordinary experience of multiple suicides over many years. With their efforts and words, suicide prevention seems possible. * Jill Harkavy-Friedman, PhD, SVP of Research, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention * Life under Pressure provides a vital intervention in the discussion of youth suicide prevention. The story of Poplar Grove tells us that the roots of suicide are social, which means that the solutions must be too. From empowering schools to be sites of systemic care, to asserting the need for young people to be included in discussions about loss and prevention, to highlighting the protective factor of shared grief, Anna Mueller and Seth Abrutyn provide a road map to a more hopeful future where the mental health of young people is supported not only individually but by the institutions and communities in which they live. * C.J. Pascoe, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Oregon and author of Nice Is Not Enough: Inequality and the Limits of Kindness at American High *

Author Information

"Anna S. Mueller is Luther Dana Waterman Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Indiana University Bloomington. She is a leading expert on youth suicide and suicide prevention in schools, and her work has helped families, schools, and communities understand how social environments generate risk of suicide and why youth suicide clusters emerge and persist. Her work on youth suicide has received numerous awards for its contributions to knowledge, including the Edwin Shneidman Early Career Award from the American Association of Suicidology. In 2020, she was named one of Science News's ""Top 10 Early Career Scientists to Watch."" Seth Abrutyn is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia. Abrutyn specializes in youth suicide and is also a general sociologist whose research rests at the intersection of mental health, emotions, social psychology, and culture, and which has won several national awards. His overarching goals as a social scientist are to merge sociological theory with the public imagination in hopes of making accessible sociological tools in the service of solving social problems."

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