Could sibling rivalry lead a 14 year old to commit suicide?

How can any of us, not knowing the details and the child himself, dare to speculate?

It’s possible. What is this about?

I was informed of a teen suicide. Apparently the relationship between the boy and his sister was a nightmare! There was a note in which he expressed his love to all friends and relatives, love to all except his sister. He also chose her birthday to do what he did!

Of course. Kids could be the most emotional, irrational and obviously, immature beings.

@ZEPHYRA Ah, I see. Well, I think that’s pretty telling in itself. I wonder what she did? That’s horrible. I hope she doesn’t end up committing suicide, too. :(

What I believe about suicide is that people consider it when they are in incredible pain and they can’t imagine the pain will ever end, except if they are dead.

What causes this? You could claim it was a distorted view of the world. That is, that whatever the proximate cause is, it also takes something in the brain to magnify the significance of that event to make it of life-changing importance.

So maybe it’s the crash of ‘29. Maybe it’s your company going bankrupt. Maybe it’s the loss of a spouse to divorce. Maybe it’s being teased mercilessly every day. Maybe it’s feeling inferior to a sibling. Whatever. The mind takes that and magnifies it to a point where you can’t see an end to it and you can’t imagine ever being happy again. You can’t imagine a way of stopping the pain except for dying. So you do.

I can see it happening that way. But we’ll never know for sure what it was like to be inside that boys head. Then again, I’ve been close enough to that point that I really don’t want to think about it much. I just gave people a tour of my 8th floor window last week on another question. I don’t want to redo it.

It could. It would depend on if he tried to get help and was rejected or the bahavior did not stop.

It sounds terrible.

Yes. Only the person committing suicide knows for sure the true reason or reasons behind their ultimate selfish act, but sibling rivalry is as good as any other speculation as for the reason.

I would think this goes beyond sibling rivalry. It sounds as if he was unbalanced to begin with and needed to blame someone for his unhappiness. If he didn’t have a sister than he would’ve chosen someone else. Of course it really depends on what she did or didn’t do. If he was just blaming her for being born than she has no reason to feel guilty. If she did something horrendous to him than she sahres some of the blame. This could’ve taken another turn, like murder suicide so it seems the real hurt may have been in his relationship with his parents.
It could simply be that he felt she was everything he was not and everytime he looked at her, he felt like a total failure.
Either way, I feel its more than sibling rivary. Rivary means that you think the other person is not up to your level and you see them as a competitor. He would’ve hung around if that was just the case.

No, the cause is an imbalance in the person who commits suicide. However, sibling rivalry might be a symptom of the underlying issue.

sure. There are all types of abuse, some not intentional in families, such as mine. Favoritism can be an issue and thus, resentment.

It is hard enough to grow with self esteem, without family not having faith in you.

A million things or nothing. If a suicide appears to have been fueled by sibling rivalry, there’s more.