SUICIDAL CHILDREN NEED OUR HELP

There is nothing more heart-rending than looking into the eyes of a child who wants to be dead. Like Claire, these children have a blank stare, a lack of connection, a deep sense of emptiness that makes them impossible to reach emotionally.

During my career as a clinical psychologist in child and adolescent mental health I have met many Claires: children living with feelings of abject despair, isolation and hopelessness, who are such a danger to themselves that they must be treated in adolescent units after being sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

Once all harmful objects – their shoelaces, belts and anything else they could use to hurt themselves – are taken from them, these children are put on a special observation level; at all times they have to be arm’s length away from two members of staff, whether they are on the toilet, eating, even sleeping.

As shocking as all this sounds – and however much we as a society do not want to believe that children could be suicidal – it happens. Every 30 minutes a youngster aged between 10 and 19 in the UK attempts suicide, with at least one doing so successfully each day. These young people are often suffering from depression and anxiety and have given up on life. The causes of their wish to die range from abuse and neglect to bullying, family stress and disharmony to loss and bereavement. They are not seeking attention; they feel trapped in their negative, stressful lives, have no one to talk to and see no way out – except death.

Why do children, who should be celebrating life with a spring in their step and joy in their hearts, want to die? There is no simple answer, but it is clear that the accumulation of stress factors will tip a child into suicidal thoughts, particularly if, because of genetic inheritance or social and familial circumstances, they are predisposed to emotional and psychological difficulties.

There is no doubt that children are under increasing stress. They have access to information and images that they may not always be able to process and understand; there are also the social pressures they feel as they are bombarded with expectations and images of unattainable lives. Films and music contain depictions and descriptions of suicide and death that can be seductive to a vulnerable child. There are even websites that children can access where they will be coached and supported in the planning and execution of their death.

This is no world for children. Indeed, increasing numbers of them are telling us that they do not want to be a part of this world. ChildLine receives many calls from children who are suicidal – some are sleepy and incoherent, having taken pills before the call. Between 2003 and 2004 there was a 14 per cent increase in the number of calls from children talking about suicidal thoughts and plans, with another 14 per cent increase in calls during 2004 – 05.

ChildLine wants to raise public awareness about this issue: with up to 4,000 children attempting to speak to a counselor every day but only 2,300 getting through, there is every chance that a call that cannot be answered due to lack of available resources is a call from a child planning their death (it costs ChildLine £3 to answer a child’s call and £38 to counsel them just once).

If we do not see the desperate and tragic behaviour of our young as a marker of how we have lost some fundamental morals and values, what on earth will open our eyes?

* heart-rending – душераздирающий; горестный, тяжелый.

* abject – жалкий, презренный; низкий, униженный, несчастный, находящийся в унизительном положении.

* bullying – буллинг (физический и / или психологический террор в отношении ребенка со стороны группы одноклассников или аналогичное явление среди военнослужащих (дедовщина); используется также как синоним термина моббинг).

As everyone knows, "The Da Vinci Code" provided Paris with an economic boomlet, from the Hotel Ritz where "Robert Langdon's room" is available starting at?670 per night (free bathrobe thrown in) to the Louvre, which rents out "Da Vinci" audio guides for?10.

A guide named Bruno de Baecque has his own Louvre tour inspired loosely by the film – he has already done successful "Amelie Poulain" tours of Montmartre – but "The Da Vinci Code," he says, is merely a come-on and he wouldn't dream of reading or seeing it. The theme of his tour is violence in art. "I want to show the uncomfortable, chaotic side of art. The Louvre is not thought of as violent but many of its artworks are."

De Baecque (pronounced back) ignores historical context and technique. "Too much context closes the eyes," he says. Instead, he invents themes that serve as a pretext to open eyes rather than fill heads. Those who respond to his Web site tend not to be art buffs but people who rarely go to museums, in part because they are afraid to. By the end of the tour they have learned that even an untrained eye can observe and in de Baecque they find a new best friend.

"I get pretty excited during tours, I move a lot, I touch people. A lot of them fall in love with me because I am very seductive in the tour and then I go off and forget them and they forget me."

Before becoming a guide, Bruno, 48, studied law, was briefly an actor and, more successfully, an animateur, or emcee, at a down-market version of the Club Med. As a guide, with his compelling gaze, slangy chitchat and confiding voice, he says he remains an animator although he does have a permit as a guide-interpreter. The language he interprets into is approximate English, learned largely from listening to Bob Dylan.

There are several categories of licensed guides: The Louvre's 67regulars, for example, have a pass from the Reunion des Musses Nationaux and are usually referred to as conferences, or lecturers, which sounds rather more distinguished than guide. Self-taught, Bruno won his professional card in 1994 after an oral exam in French and English on his chosen subject, the rediscovery of medieval art in the 19th century. His category is Guide Auxiliaire a Titre Definitif, permanent auxiliary guide.

There is, he says, a, lot he doesn't know but it is best not to admit it. "If someone asks about a picture you don't know, you mustn't say I don't know, you must say let's look at it together." Before responding to any query, he tends to say encouragingly, "Good question!"

What has made de Baecque stand out, aside from his height (1 meter 90, or 6 foot 3), is his Les Plus Belles Fesses du Louvre, a tour of the museum's prettiest posteriors, female and male. The Louvre is said not to be thrilled at being seen as a repository of "feelthy" pictures but Bruno says it wasn't as naughty as that. To encourage a feeling of transgression he gave each visitor a black paper carnival mask which, lacking funds for something more elegant, he attached to a chopstick.

De Baecque is not without some intellectual pretense – he names as inspirations the leftist philosopher Pierre Bourdieu and rock 'n' roll – but mostly he wants people to have a good time and to realize that what they see matters as much as what they are told. "French museums with their inheritance from the Encyclopedists think you have to describe everything. Lesson-giving is the French malady, there is no sense of play."

The tours usually take place on Wednesday and Friday nights when the museum is open late so that people can come straight from work, and a couple of weeks ago for his second violence tour (he will lead a third on July 19) Bruno as usual stopped at the desk to pay?30, or about $37, for his "droit de parole" pass and to slap a sticker with his tour reservation number on his chest. Then he picked up his group – 14 for the most part youngish people, three of them men in office gear carrying briefcases – and led them to the Richelieu wing to look at some statuary.

Once Bruno decides on a theme he maps out appropriate works: "There mustn't be long tunnels without the theme, when people are intrigued by a theme you can't spend the whole time walking."

This means that for Les Plus Belles Fesses he had to skip the luscious pink bottoms of Rubens because they were on the wrong floor. But for violence it all worked out well – various tortured sculptures on the ground floor, then a nearby escalator to Poussin's "Rape of the Sabines" and a hair-raising end with Bosch's "Ship of Fools."

Along the way, de Baecque decided to emphasize the baroque sculptures of Pierre Puget, particularly his Hercules because the strong man ran famously and frequently amok and is, in Bruno's opinion, the father of modern stress. Right away, before we even reach Hercules, a young woman asks Bruno about the historical context of another work. "Good question!" he replies and ignores it.

"My approach is empirical, too much rationality and you won't use your eyes." Then, as often happens, one of the tourists sets off an alarm by touching a stone thigh. You mustn't touch, Bruno explains, and why bother anyway? Touching is pleasantly transgressive but a trained eye can transgress with much greater pleasure: "Marble is just cold stone."

The key to Bruno's Hercules theory is Puget's portrayal of the hero seated on his club, one massive hand clutching a couple of the apples of the Hesperides. Noting the torsion of the body, the guide asks, "Do you see a man at rest? No, he lives in violence and cannot rest."

"Yes, but he isn't resting. Does the 35-hour week bring repose?" Point won. The tour is a hit.

De Baecque has also done gay tours of the Louvre and, for a couple celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary, a tour of paintings about love. Less popularly, he takes people to the Pompidou Center but says the French are afraid of modern art. "I say don't worry, I am here. I am a lifesaver who will pull you out of the water."

He would like to be engaged for corporate seminars, which are well paid, and is working on new Louvre themes for the autumn season. So far, if he has capitalized on "Amelie Poulain" and "The Da Vinci Code," he has organized nothing on the subject of a recent film that has proved a boon to merchandisers of perfumes, plates, and macaroons.

So would Bruno do a tour based on Marie-Antoinette? "Good question!" he replies. "Why not?"

TOKYO: When the Imperial Household Agency announced recently that Princess Masako was receiving therapy for depression and anxiety, it was the first time in the long, long history of Japan's monarchy that there was royal recognition of something most take for granted: personal happiness.

Until then, the issue of personal happiness or unhappiness had never been officially broached, irrelevant as it was in a mind-set that placed the survival of the Chrysanthemum Throne above everything else.

In keeping with that thinking, enormous – ultimately unbearable – pressure was applied on Masako, a Harvard- and Oxford-educated woman who had been destined for a brilliant career in diplomacy, to do one thing and one thing alone: bear a suitable male heir.

After Masako disappeared from the public eye eight months ago, the Imperial Household Agency steadfastly denied that anything was seriously wrong. Then late last month it put its imprimatur on a statement that the princess was suffering from a stress-induced adjustment disorder and, in addition to counseling, was taking prescription drugs.

Beneath the story of an unhappy princess lies the larger story of a monarchy struggling to catch up with a changing Japan. Japan's monarchy has changed greatly in the past century and a half, and change has typically come with the ascent of a new emperor, which starts a new age on the calendar in Japan.

To many court watchers, recent actions by Crown Prince Naruhito portend changes that will occur when the Heisei Era of Emperor Akihito, 70, gives way to the as-yet-unnamed age of the future emperor, Masako's husband 44.

"The crown prince has been making statements as the next emperor," said Toshiya Matsuzaki, a reporter for the magazine Josei Jishin Weekly who has been covering the court for 45 years. "He is contending to become an emperor in a new era."

The prince, who is expected soon to begin assuming many of the public duties performed by his father, signaled how things might change in a speech in May that, especially after the Imperial Household Agency’s announcement last week, is being recognized as historic.

In the speech, his usually affable face visibly taut, the prince spoke of the illness and unhappiness of his wife, 40.

"There has been a move," the prince said, in words that have been scrutinized endlessly since then, "to deny Masako's career and personality."

The words, directed perhaps at the Imperial Household Agency, perhaps at his parents, conveyed the message that he was unwilling to let his wife be sacrificed for the greater good of the monarchy.

"Essentially, the crown prince put more importance on individual happiness than on the imperial system," said Takeshi Hara, a professor specializing in the monarchy at Meiji Gakuin University.

However epoch-making the prince's words may have been, they were in a true sense behind the times in the broader Japanese society. For if older generations of Japanese corporate employees and their wives were willing to sacrifice their private lives and personal happiness for the survival of their companies, far fewer today are willing to do so.

The prince and princess were no doubt expected to act the same way their parents had. Akihito's wife, Princess Michiko, quickly produced a male heir to the throne. But as the first commoner to marry into the royal family, Michiko was subjected to enormous pressure and also – it has always been an open secret – suffered from depression. Yet neither the Imperial House-hold nor then Crown Prince Akihito ever talked about it.

Akihito’s choice of a commoner as a bride was revolutionary in a monarchy in which his father, Emperor Hirohito, had been considered a living god by some Japanese. But the prince’s choice of Masako Owada was equally revolutionary. He was choosing a type of bride many Japanese men avoid to this day: a woman with a full-fledged career, someone who was better educated, more accomplished and even taller than he was.

After declining the prince's marriage proposal for several years, Masako accepted 11 years ago, but only after eliciting his promise to protect her.

It was not clear what caused the princess to sink into her present depression eight months ago. But it became severe enough for her to take the unheard-of step of leaving the Tokyo palace and staying for one month at her parents' country villa in Karuizawa, 145 kilometers, or 90 miles, northwest of Tokyo.

The Imperial Household Agency, which had ignored Masako's depression, could no longer do so after the prince's comments in May. The agency said it was considering changing her official duties, thus acknowledging her pain.

"They wanted to avoid having support for the imperial system crumble," Hara said.

"They wanted to avoid a worst-case scenario in which the Japanese people start questioning whether they want a system that destroys personal happiness. So they issued a message that's as positive as possible. They're trying to maintain the people's support."

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