It is both dispiriting and confounding to read in the news the latest data on the well-bring - or lack of same - of young girls in Canada through research conducted by the Public Health Agency of Canada.

Reported in the latest issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, there has been an upswing of suicide rates among that demographic.  Just to consider the reality that children living in a wealthy, socially advanced country of the world - where education and general well-being associated with health and social outcomes are a high priority - are vulnerable to the kind of catastrophic actions that take their own lives, is incredible to contemplate.

Boredom, the scourge of humanity, where there is nothing to advance interest in life, few values to be realized, fewer aspirations to drive the human spirit, and little hope in the future, is surely the cause.

It is true that extreme depression strikes in the unlikeliest of places, where young people living in stimulating environments among loving family members, and who put forward a facade of achievement and interest in life, occasionally surface in the news because they have, unaccountably, committed suicide.  The deep, dark depths of mental health illnesses strike anywhere, among the poor and the wealthy alike, a condition of life that many struggle to surmount.

Then there are the perceived social anomalies where those who are somehow different than what is considered the norm become outcasts, either voluntarily by revealing and revelling in their differences, challenging the social environment which then confirms them in their outcast state, leaving them isolated and bereft of emotional support to struggle for acceptance among their peers.  For some, that struggle and the ensuing attitudes of hopelessness and despair lead to suicide.

Those young people whose gender and sex orientation is different from the acceptable norm suffer rejection and misery.

And then, there is a demographic whose presence in the ranks of suicidal teens is greatly disproportionate to their general presence in society, Canada's aboriginal children.  Whose experience can be very much unlike the mainstream of young people growing up in Canadian society.  Children who live a tribal-clan existence on First Nations reserves, a completely artificial lifestyle where reserve aboriginals who express the desire to live as their ancestors did in accord with nature and the land they revere, in fact live an isolated existence most often without a larger purpose.

Their needs for emotional, educational and social support are most often absent.  In these often dysfunctional enclaves, parents fall victim to the mind-numbing allure of addictions to relieve their own boredom.  A boredom that results from having no goals, no aspirations, no opportunities, few responsibilities and fewer mental and physical challenges.  It's just as well that the latest Government of Canada budget has allocated a hefty additional sum in support of aboriginal education; it is sorely needed.

But greater educational opportunities can do only so much, when there is no general respect for achieving education instilled among the First Nations populations, where parents fail to urge their children to value education to enable them to achieve aspirational goals.  Hardly surprising when the parents themselves have never demonstrated to their children an interest in or willingness to become something other than bored, drug- and alcohol-addicted layabouts, existing on the public dole.

Suicide rates for girls aged 10 to 14 - the study just released illustrates - increased 50% from 0.6 per 100,000 in 1980, to 0.8 per 100,000 in 2008.  Among girls aged 15 to 19, the rate nearly doubled - from 3.7 to 6.2 per 100,000 during the same period.  Suicide is identified as the second leading cause of death - first is the unintentional injury causing death, such as car crashes - among 10- to 19-year-olds; 20.4% of all deaths in that age group.

Many of these deaths attributed to suicide are identified as being the result of a "game" where children strangle themselves - or their friends - to cut off the flow of blood and oxygen to the brain, resulting in an euphoric high.  During the process, the object is to feel light-headed, experience the high, then release pressure before passing out.  Sometimes, that plan goes awry, and death results.

"Among female children and adolescents overall suicide rates have increased, with suffocation becoming the most common method used", reported researchers.  It is a woeful expression of societal failure to answer to the needs of the most promising and the most vulnerable in society.