Teenage Wasteland

    I read an article about "Teenage Wasteland" . It is about a incident that teenage mass suicide in Bergenfield, NJ in 1987. The point of this article is what context and background the mass suicide had. First of all, teenage suicide was a virtually nonexistent category prior to 1960. But between 1950 and 1980, "suicide " is second leading cause of death among American's young people. The actual suicide rate among people aged 15 to 24. To date, there are more than 5,000 teen suicided annually. The most unbelievable things is that 400,000 adolescents attempt suicide each year. The research says that these tragic incidents mostly happen in rural areas like what happened in Bergenfield. Besides, alcohol and drugs are involved increasingly. According to the reading, after what happened in Bergenfield, the number of a mass suicide had been increasing. Moreover, many young people imitated the way they die from the incident. The question was what social factors tied them so closely and led them to be ended their life by suicide. These days, a mass suicide becomes a social problem in Japan as well. I remember a incident that young people who got to know each other on the internet and died in a mass suicide. The police found the website where those young people met each other after the incident. The website name was" suicide community" and it assembled people who wanted to die together. Those applicants left a message on the website about how they felt about the society and their grudge against people who were around them. These people were suffering from social withdrawal, and who did not go to school. As the article says, not only teenage suicide but most cases of suicide were thought to be due to social background and cultural background. Many young people in Japan feel pressure thinking about their future in the difficulty of finding work after graduating from college. They think that the failure of finding job means a loser of the society. Therefore they are likely to commit suicide these days. It might be difficult to change the social style or cultural standard of each counties but there must be a space where young people can feel free to talk what is on their mind. 

Association between drugs and family violence.

I read an article about associations between drugs and family violence. It says that there is substantial support for the notion that alcohol and drug use is related to violence in general and to family violence in particular. Research on homicide, assault, child abuse, and wife abuse all find substantial associations between alcohol use and abuse and violence. But there is evidence from cross cultural research that alcohol is not a primary cause of the violence. If the pharmacological properties of alcohol are the direct causes of behavior after drinking, then there should be very little variation in drinking behavior across cultures. Drinking behavior is different from people in each society believe about alcohol. lets say, if a culture believes that alcohol is a disinhibitor, then people in the culture tend to become disinhibited. On the other hand, if the culturel belief is that alcohol is a depressant, drinkers become passive and depressed. It meant that the belief of drinking alcohol directly become a cause of violence is wrong notion and just a excuse when we drink alcohol and perpetrate violence toward somebody.
 When I was a college student in Japan, I used to visit to a institution where children ,who have mental illness, went as a school. Because my major was psychology and it was a part of lessons to know treatments for these children.
I couldn't talk to any of the children but could hear the story why they were in the place. There was a girl who doesn't have parents, she lost her mother due to an accident and her father was in a rehab for alcohol abuse after he arrested for abuse to the girl. Her father became alcoholic since he lost her wife. I asked a staff of the institution that why her father was in rehab for alcohol but going to psychiatric hospital to cure his mental illness. The answer was that he was out of control when he drank ,therefore he must have needed to stop alcohol abuse first in order to rehabilitate and live with his daughter again. I was thinking that it was not a fundamental solution for him. The primary treatment should have been to cure his emotional damage of losing his wife.  As the article says that the influence of substances or alcohol on the likelihood of violence is mediated by social factors and personality factors. I learned a lot with this article and reconfirmed my notion of relationship with alcohol, substances and violence.

Who am I ?

Hi. I'm Haruka from Japan.
The reason I came to NY is that I didn't want to finish up my life experience only in Japan.  Most of my friends in Japan got a job ,which actually they were not interested in so much, after graduating college. That's because Japanese society shapes students to get a job right after graduating college or university. Students also believe that is an appropriate choice to live their life correctly. This idea is influenced by not only social power but parents also have a huge power to shape students's life decision. None of parents want their kids to do diverge from the right decision. But my question is what is right decision? Even if I insist that it's boring everybody starts working after graduating college and gets married when she or he became appropriate age, Japanese society thinks I just escape from the reality or I'm loser.  Since I came to NY, I realized Japanese society were very much conservative  in the way of thinking.  Many people in NY are more free to have their life plan or thought of their life. Good thing about my life is My father is supportive  to my dream. He told me that "Life is short", therefore I should do whatever I want.
I think my father is the biggest influence in my life. Even if other my family members force me to come back to Japan,only my dad keeps encouraging me to accomplish my life in NY.
I haven't decided any specific goals of my life. That's because there are many things that I want to do. First of all, I want to establish my own company which is related in fashion.  Secondly I have a teacher's license of Japanese language, so I want to teach Japanese to other counties s' people.