Suicide: A Contagious Culture.(Brief Article)

The bright innocence of youth is disappearing beneath a dark wave of teen suicides on the island of Guam.

Early this year a 12-year-old boy hanged himself with his football shoelaces after an argument with his mother. An 18-year-old student, suffering over a breakup with his girlfriend, hanged himself from a pipe in his shower. A 14-year-old girl filled notebooks with thoughts and plans for suicide months before she actually killed herself. Twenty-two teens and preteens have acted on those vows and killed themselves in the last 26 months.

Grown-ups are reeling. What can explain such a deadly epidemic?

The vortex of the epidemic is a secretive club called "Prestigious Angels," and similar groups like it. Part of the deadly allure of these "friendship pacts" is that members promise to kill themselves if their friends will follow.

According to the March 22 Washington Post, Guam police and social workers say the teenagers are using the Internet and e-mail to form suicide pacts. How widespread is sympathy for such behavior? When eighth-grade teacher Dana Taitano asked her class how many of them found the idea of suicide attractive, all but one student raised his hand.

On an island of only 154,000 people, these deaths are family affairs with a wide-ranging ripple effect. According to the Post, the native Chamorro have large extended families "and consider even unrelated neighbors to be `aunts' and uncles.' "

"It's a crisis," said Lilli Perez Iyechad, a social worker. "It's almost like we are numb, in a state of shock."