Britain: Reports Cite Dramatic Increase in Self-Harm by Children

While reading this I stopped to think about how my university has instituted this year training for professors to recognize suicidal tendencies in their students. So far I have received four notices about training sessions... at the same time a college newspaper reports on the proliferation of paxel/mood-alterering prescriptions for college students and I remember hearing at a previous university that one-third of the student body was on a mood elevator.

Britain: dramatic increase in self-harm by children

"Big and Blue in the U.S.A." by James Howard Kunstler:

"Have any reporters noticed how we actually live here in America? With very few exceptions, our cities are hollowed out ruins. Our towns have committed ritualized suicide in thrall to the WalMart God. Most Americans live in suburban habitats that are isolating, disaggregated, and neurologically punishing, and from which every last human quality unrelated to shopping convenience and personal hygiene has been expunged. We live in places where virtually no activity or service can be accessed without driving a car, and the (usually solo) journey past horrifying vistas of on-ramps and off-ramps offers no chance of a social encounter along the way. Our suburban environments have by definition destroyed the transition between the urban habitat and the rural hinterlands. In other words, we can't walk out of town into the countryside anywhere. Our 'homes,' as we have taken to calling mere mass-produced vinyl boxes at the prompting of the realtors, exist in settings leached of meaningful public space or connection to civic amenity, with all activity focused inward to the canned entertainments piped into giant receivers -- where the children especially sprawl in masturbatory trances, fondling joysticks and keyboards, engorged on cheez doodles and taco chips."