At first, most people couldn’t bring themselves to believe it. Two 17-year-old girls joined hands and jumped from the sixth floor of an apartment building in Ilioupoli.

Children feel that the life awaiting them in the society we are handing down is a life not worth living.

Almost instantly, everyone looked around at the young people in their own lives, at that age, preparing for the grueling national university entrance exams, the Panhellenic exams.

Everyone had the sense that what happened was unprecedented by Greek standards. But is it? And what might society be missing about the way today’s teenagers experience and perceive contemporary Greek reality?

Suicides Are on the Rise in Greece

Unraveling this difficult subject, Giorgos Nikolaidis, a psychiatrist and Director of Mental Health and Social Welfare at the Institute of Child Health, notes first that a double suicide attempt is indeed unusual for Greece.

Greece records some of the lowest suicide rates in the European Union, both among adults and minors, ranking second to last after Cyprus. In particular, in the 15-to-20 and 25-to-35 age groups, the country has among the lowest rates in Europe.

According to Nikolaidis, in Greece, those who have traditionally taken their own lives have been elderly patients suffering from painful, terminal illnesses.

There is a widespread sense that we live in a lawless society. If you are powerful, a winner, first, then everyone else is forced to endure whatever the powerful do to them. Everyone else has no social protection.

After the financial crisis of 2008, a notable shift occurred. Suicides began climbing sharply among middle-aged people, between 45 and 65. As Nikolaidis explains, “those who are now struggling the most are the ones who carry the responsibility of running households. We are seeing the impact of socioeconomic issues on people’s lives.”

It is worth noting that up until 2008 and 2009, the annual number of suicide deaths hovered between 300 and 350. From 2010 onward, the figure has been around 450.

A Lawless Society

In the wake of the double suicide attempt by the two 17-year-olds, Nikolaidis draws particular attention to the leak of sensitive information from the police to the media.

“The fact that the contents of the 17-year-old’s note are now circulating across all media outlets is, in and of itself, a serious problem,” he says.

But why does that connect to the fact that young people cannot endure society?

“Because there is a pervasive sense that we live in a lawless society. If you are powerful, a winner, if you come first, then everyone else is forced to put up with whatever the powerful do. Everyone else has no social protection,” Nikolaidis explains.

The society of extreme competition, of “winner takes all,” is a condition that leads many young people to view life with profound pessimism.

A Lonely Society Without a Sense of Collective

Of course, as Nikolaidis explains, individual traits and personal experiences play a critical role in how teenagers and young people perceive today’s society. “Some children are more vulnerable and more exposed than others to high-pressure situations, such as the national exams.”

“A romantic disappointment, a professional setback, a family event, any psychologically stressful situation will trigger more extreme reactions in a more vulnerable child compared to one who is more resilient,” the experienced psychiatrist explains.

The core issue, however, is that children feel the life awaiting them in the society they are inheriting is not a life worth living.

“It is an endless struggle where most people will find themselves in an increasingly worse position, and will suffer from the kind of lawlessness we saw when the suicide note was made public. A portion of teenagers and young people feel what the song says: ‘you’re unwanted everywhere and dying everywhere.’ Unfortunately, the individual path leads to a dead end.”

Attempting a comparison with older generations, Nikolaidis identifies a key difference.

“Young people used to be far more socially and politically active, and that gave them a sense that by taking part in things, they could have some control over their lives and over the world they would live in. They could hold onto something,” he explains.

He continues: “But if I feel that I am simply an isolated person in an environment that becomes more competitive every day, where I am expected to achieve and accumulate knowledge at any cost, it becomes very hard to endure this constant struggle. For the majority of young people, life is a perpetual effort with an ever-shrinking expected return.”

The Responsibility of Adults and the Violence of the System

Inevitably, Nikolaidis turns his focus to the reckoning that adults must undertake.

“What kind of world are we leaving to our children, to today’s younger generation?” he asks. He then answers bluntly, but unfortunately realistically: “We are leaving them a world in which we have destroyed nature, sold out the country, a world where jobs keep getting worse, more grueling, and more poorly paid. Where democracy and the sense of justice grow weaker by the day. Why do we expect children to love this life? This is the world they are inheriting. Why are we surprised that some of them can’t take it and say: it’s not worth living?”

Today’s children are constantly exposed to the violence of the system, which they internalize in every possible way, Nikolaidis warns.

“Some children will turn that violence against themselves. Some will flirt with thoughts of death, some will get involved with substances. And that is a form of self-attack. Others will die on the roads. Men between 15 and 30 are overrepresented in traffic fatalities. And others still will externalize the violence, directing it outward rather than inward.”

School Must Become a Safe Place

Christos Liapis, a psychiatrist and doctoral faculty member at the University of Athens and former president of KETHEA (the Greek Therapy Center for Dependent Individuals), brings another dimension into the conversation: the need to create a safe school environment in every sense and at every level, starting with early prevention around student mental health, including issues like bullying.

He sets the framework: “According to international evidence, for a school to become safe, prevention must be meaningfully embedded in the school environment. It must be universal. At the same time, it must also be targeted and selective, with interventions directed at subgroups of young people who are more vulnerable, where the risk of developing mental health issues, substance use problems, or suicidal behavior is above average. A safe school also means safe physical infrastructure.”

School must also, as Liapis explains, foster relationships among students, parents, guardians, school staff, and even the wider local community.

Given that adolescence is a period of emotional and developmental vulnerability, coinciding with young people’s introduction to many of the challenges of adult life, including relationships, career orientation, and exposure to social media, Liapis stresses the importance of detecting possible warning signs, such as social withdrawal.

Various experiences may slip under the radar, whether of school psychologists, who are sadly absent in most schools, or of the family.

As Liapis explains: “We must not forget that a large proportion of people who suffer from depression showed their first symptoms during adolescence. That is why both parents and educators need to be sensitized to the early detection of symptoms such as emotional volatility or heightened sensitivity, which can alternate with outbursts of anger, frustration, or emotional apathy. All of these risk being dismissed as normal manifestations of exam-related anxiety during the national exams, or simply as typical teenage behavior.”

The Steamroller of the National Exams

The national university entrance exams could not be absent from this conversation.

For Liapis, in Greek society, success in the national exams is equivalent to the social validation of an entire family.

The fact that Greece endured a prolonged socioeconomic crisis, followed by the COVID-19 crisis, then the energy crisis and the inflation crisis, while the climate crisis “runs in parallel” and has already affected families in Greece, has resulted in reduced family income and heightened socioeconomic pressure on parents.

Today’s teenagers absorb all of this pressure like a sponge, which makes the weight of success or failure in the national exams feel even heavier.

“The student lives with the pressure of a family that struggles to pay for tutoring, and the pressure that even if admission to university is achieved, the family will struggle to support the child studying in another city. And the current landscape for university graduates finding professional employment is difficult. A degree has stopped being equivalent to professional stability or, at least, financial security. The result is that the cocktail of emotions experienced by a junior or senior high school student becomes even more explosive.”

And what is the takeaway from all of this?

Liapis sums it up: “We must approach what happened, and whatever information circulates, with great respect. But this specific event should mobilize us immediately. Because if we do not implement school-based prevention, we risk seeing a repetition of tragedies like this one.”