5 Tweens and Teens 121
Nondeath Losses
Loss of Self-Esteem/Identity
Tweens and teens need to build intense and close peer relationships where
they feel known and esteemed. When their identity is devalued by peers
due to some sort of difference, they can become distraught and impulsive.
Bullying is often an indicator of such devaluation and adolescents cannot
easily or constructively avoid the school environment where it most often
occurs. This has had major ramifications for teens who are lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ). As suicide is a potential outcome
of bullying, it must be taken very seriously as a loss of peer acceptance and
self-esteem (www.suicide.org/teen-suicide-and-youth-suicide.html). The
Trevor Project was started to help prevent suicide among LGBTQ youth
(www. thetrevorproject.org). Adolescents who are out of the ordinary in some
way that is important in their environment (bookish in an athletic community;
dark skinned in a pale community; from another country) tend to be at risk
for feeling a loss of self-esteem. Adults need to take these losses of peer valua-
tion seriously, help adolescents express their loss, and look for communities of
acceptance. Teens on the whole seem to have a trajectory of suicidal ideation
that peaks between ages 14 and 17 and patterns of increasing or decreasing
ideation may be predictive of suicide attempt (Reuter, Holm, McGeorge, &
Conger, 2008). Unexpectedly, males with decreasing ideation are more likely
to attempt suicide, while females with increasing ideation are more likely to
attempt suicide (at least in Reuter et al.’s Caucasian sample).
The effort to assure teens “It gets better” (www.itgetsbetter.org/pages/
about-it-gets-better-project) has helped to prevent suicide during the pain-
ful years of adolescence when differences seem insurmountable. Although
established to help LGBTQ youth, their pledge includes a vow to “speak
up against hate and intolerance whenever I see it, at school and at work”
and to reassure teens that it gets better. Even Sean, a Big Man on Campus
whose story introduced this chapter, experienced a profound loss of self-
esteem after his identity as a star athlete could no longer be enacted due
to injury.
Loss of a Relationship
The development of relationships is a critical developmental aspect of ado-
lescence and romantic relationships are a crucial part of this. Yet, romantic
relationships dissolve so frequently in adolescence that theorists believe that
changing romances are part of how adolescents learn to develop, maintain,
and dissolve intimate relationships, as well as identify their orientation to
gender and sexuality (Collins, 2003). In a study of Canadian heterosexual
teens who experienced the recent dissolution of a romantic relationship,
Connolly and McIsaac (2009) found reasons for the break-up clustered pri-
marily around unmet “interdependence” needs. This indicates that the teens
were able to recognize their own desires for intimacy, connection, and affilia-
tion and to end relationships that did not meet the standard they had begun
to internalize. While adolescent romance has often been disenfranchised as
“puppy love” (Rowling, 2002), the intensity of grief has negative health effects.
