Mariannet Amper, commits suicide 12 years old

By CLAIRE SY DELFIN11/10/2007 | 09:15 PM

She would have completed her elementary school, but the 12-year-old girl grew so dejected that she hanged herself, and her dreams of finishing school died with her.

Mariannet Amper’s suicide last week in Davao City hogged headlines and sparked off protest rallies against the government.

Poverty has been blamed on her decision to end her life.

Under her pillow was a letter she wrote addressed to television program, “Wish Ko Lang," which grants viewers’ wishes. On it, Mariannet wished for a new pair of shoes, a bag, a bicycle and better-paying jobs for her parents.

She also left a diary, narrating her family’s difficulties surviving a life penniless in a little hut that has neither electricity nor running water.

She also wrote that she had not attended school for a month for lack of transportation fare.

“I suspect she did it because of our situation," her father Isabelo, a carpenter, told reporters in the vernacular.

But psychiatrists disputes that poverty cannot be the only factor to push someone, especially a child, to commit suicide.

“It is unfair to simply look at suicide in that angle (poverty)," said psychiatrist Dr. Ma. Luz Casimiro-Querubin. After all, many poor Filipinos do not resort to killing themselves despite their hopeless condition. And there have been cases of children born to well-to-do families who have committed or attempted suicide.

Suicide is not an instant decision, she said. It is borne out of a suicidal tendency that the child develops within himself.

Suicidal tendency, in turn, is a psychosocial and multi-factorial behavior that is developed through time when the child faces long-standing problems within himself and in his immediate environment.

Soon, the child would manifest episodes of depression, hopelessness and low self-esteem.

Although poverty is a risk factor, it can hardly stand-alone. It is the lack or absence of support system that compounds the child’s problem, leading her to lose hope and meaning in life, and eventually commit suicide.

“The fact that Mariannet has six more siblings in a family with very limited resources indicates that some of them, including her, may be marginalized," Casimiro-Querubin says.

Hence, even if she was born to a rich family, but was wanting of proper attention from significant people around her, she is prone to develop suicidal tendencies.

Lack of data
Experts, however, find it difficult to conduct research on suicide for any age group in the country because the Philippines has no central registry for recording suicide and suicidal attempts. Data gathering is even made more difficult by religious and social biases.

The latest data available is from the World Health Organization, which was released in 1993. It says that suicide rates per hundred thousand population in the Philippines are 2.5 for males and 1.7 for females.

Casimiro-Querubin agrees that suicide is rare in the Philippines, but warns that it is happening and is increasing especially with the rising incidence of parents going abroad for employment, leaving behind children with distorted support system.

“It has a high psychosocial cost to children," she said.

Child psychiatrist Dr. Agnes Bueno said that in her practice, the youngest in her files of patients who attempted suicide seriously is an eight-year-old boy.

A child below five years, she says, has no concept of death as permanent and meaningful. “Therefore, he is incapable of actualizing suicide although accident-proneness could be an equivalent in their age group," Bueno said.

She shares in her article entitled, “When a Child Wants to Die,’ published in Medical Observer magazine in April 2001 a background inventory of attempted suicide among her patients. Her inventory shows the following:

- Ten out of 10 belong to Class A economic status
- Nine out of 10 are Catholics
- Eight out of 10 are males
- Eight out of 10 are due to relationships (family and romance)
- Two out of 10 are due to clinical depression
- Two out of 10 are in an incestuous relationship with their fathers
- Ten out of 10 occurred in the home
- Ten out of 10 are students
- Five out of 10 are positive for family history of alcoholism
- Two out of 10 are positive for family history of suicide
- Three out of 10 have friends who also attempted suicide

She advises parents to immediately detect sudden changes in the child’s behavior as such are symptomatic of a suicidal tendency.

Changes in the child’s academic performance, mood swings and instances when a child hurts another child or takes away things that do not belong to him are signs that parents should watch out for. If any of these happens, parents must open their lines of communication to the child and be more sensitive with his needs.

Suicide is instinct

Lora (not her real name) recounts occasions during her childhood when she would pound her head on a concrete wall each time she would feel sad. At one time, she attempted to hang herself.

To her recollection, her suicidal tendency started when she was nine or 10 years old. And this has remained until today that she is already in her late 20s, is married and has a child.

“It’s instinct. Suicide is always an option whenever I feel depressed," she says. “It’s just right there waiting to happen."

Lora says it doesn’t even need a major setback for her to entertain thoughts on suicide. A simple spat with her husband, or getting scolded by her mother when she was a child is enough.

She considers her suicidal tendencies a dilemma, especially since she can’t even identify its source. All she remembers is that she hated her father when she was a child. She refuses to elaborate.

Taking responsibility

But in the case of Mariannet, the real reason for her suicide seems shoved away as the government has already taken responsibility for it.

“We take responsibility for everything. Because we are leaders of the government, we need to ensure that services are there," Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo immediately ordered the Department of Education (DepEd) to fast track the expansion of the alternative distance-learning program that allows a child to study and finish schooling without having to go to a formal school.

This way, Mariannet could have continued schooling without having to worry over transportation fare.

DepEd Undersecretary Vilma Labrador has also instructed teachers to check on their students and conduct home visits after a child has gone absent for three days without prior notice.

Fight vs poverty

Even prior to Mariannet’s death, the President has ordered the Department of Budget and Management to release one billion pesos to fund hunger mitigation programs.

She has also told a business forum that her economic efforts have started to bear fruit. “The common people are now feeling the benefits of a growing economy."

This was instantly met with protests by left-wing organizations and anti-poverty groups, insisting that the economic growth fails to trickle down to the poor.

A recent Social Weather Stations survey shows that about nine million Filipino families regarded themselves as poor. Many of them also said that they experienced “severe hunger" in the last three months.

Psychiatrists, however, claimed that while there is a need to uplift the financial capacity of 87 million Filipinos, doing so cannot and will not guarantee an end to childhood suicide.

They remind Filipinos that the core of problems in children takes its roots, not in their economic status, but in their family system.

Children and young people are so often forced to do things they do not want to do, just to earn enough money to feed themselves, there siblings and their parents... then i see newspapers in the United Kingdom talking about the oh! so sad footballers who are slaves , whilst they earn £120,000 per week......what a sad , sick world we live in... tarsiers comment