> If it isn't someone you are personally willing to take some responsibility for, as you did with your wife, then I think it is wrong to insist they live.
Exactly. People, even kids, kill themselves because of "lack of perspective". Lack of a (reasonable) future. Lack of any reasonable hope for change. People aren't stupid and mental illnesses (the non-medical ones) don't actually prevent thinking. That means the first thing to realize is that a desire to kill yourself isn't illogical. Maybe it's a mistake but maybe it isn't.
Which of course is terrible and of course absolutely not what society expects of help. Here's this kid. She's broken. Find the miswire in her brain, cut it or something, and bring them back fixed. And then you read the story of the kid. Was "diagnosed" with Autism by a teacher with no psychological skills whatsoever. From that point on systematically increasing repression was used against this kid, and of course as a psychological/social worker you cannot change their situation. That, youth services will not let a psychiatrist do. They need to be fixed and accept whatever "help" other people feel the need to provide, decided by whoever gets put in charge by the government (they "just happen" to never ever be the people who actually take responsibility for the child). That's your only function. Oh and by the way, if you can't do it in 6 weeks (can be up to 16), the kid will be violently taken away by the police, in cuffs, and someone else gets that job. Oh, and if they commit suicide in your clinic, they'll bankrupt you and maybe you'll go to jail. Good luck !
So the problem in this girl's case is not just that her conclusion, that there was no perspective on a better life ... well let's just say it wasn't a particularly stupid or obviously wrong assessment of her situation. The things she didn't have control over weren't getting better over time. And she tolerated being treated like that "for her protection" for at least 3 years ... Do you really feel you'd last that long ? Kids are actually far more resilient than adults when it comes to being suicidal, but enough punishment ("help" provided involuntarily, like in the case being discussed here) will get the better of them soon. Every 3 months you get moved somewhere else, in cuffs, and the next thing is tried on you. That might be good, it might also be 12 weeks in an isolation cell. You just don't know. Hell, because they just take whatever is available right at the moment they move you (because your current placement ends you have to leave, doesn't mean they have somewhere else for you to go). So the social workers, your parents, even the juvenile judge also doesn't know, except perhaps a day or so in advance. Good luck feeling optimistic about your future.
So of course youth services itself was the cause of the lack of perspective. "Safety" for the child, imposing safety on her is what killed her. Escalating to heavier and heavier repression every time. As soon as she worsened in care someone should of course have pressed the abort button, EVEN knowing she was cutting herself or suicidal. Send her home and say she can stay there unless she chooses otherwise. Why ? To prevent doing more damage. To make it clear that her home was still there, and that the situation really is salvageable. But if you as a social worker or psychiatrist take that chance, and the result is that it was too late, and the kid does commit suicide (or worse: their parents or someone they're exposed to back home takes advantage of the situation), you'll be eaten alive by society. So nobody does. Everybody avoids responsibility, and thus taking chances on not treating kids is barely ever done. The odds are actually in favor of doing this. Even people who've tried to commit suicide, only 3% actually follow through with it, meaning the symptom disappears in 97% of cases, which is far better than treatment accomplishes.
About 400 kids are placed (which means locked up against the will of parents and child) "for their safety" for every 1 case of actual abuse in the Netherlands. Social workers build cases against these kids that aren't checked for accuracy (it is an actual policy for them to write down everything they hear, and to never check), there is no defense possible, there are children's rights, but no way to sue child services if they are violated, so there might as well not be. There is no actual appeal process against the youth court (technically there is, but whatever "protection measure" they put forth is always immediately executed, appeal or not, nor is it canceled on a succesfull appeal, it is re-evaluated by the original judge (after, of course, another waiting period). This heavily punishes appeal since if an appeal is filed, no adjustments (such as visitation by your parents, or a friend, or more phone numbers you get to call, or ...) are possible until the appeal is heard, sometimes years later)
It is very clear that at this point the system damages many more kids than it helps.
BUT there is money being handed out. For example, if you have a handicapped kid, and you need help paying for a wheelchair, this is done through youth services, with "pgb" (meaning money that "follows the kid"). Parents can even use this money to pay themselves (very badly I might add, but it's something) for watching the kid if the care required is heavy enough that the kid can't be left alone. Or to get them after school lessons for free. Or ... Also schools, institutions, even things like children's farms can get extra money through the system, if they get "problem" kids assigned to them, and so kids are being forced into it, sometimes by their own parents. But where the real damage is done is where social workers are both being made responsible for deciding on care, and paid for providing care.
The perverse incentive is of course that one can easily see that institutions', schools', social workers', ... optimal strategy is to "treat" kids that are normal to begin with, diagnose them with something like "autism", and "treat" them. How many social workers, how many schools, how many institutions do this ? Hopefully not too many, but it's equally obvious that it's rather unlikely to be zero.
This has resulted in that apparently a solid 11% of Dutch kids have a serious psychiatric problem necessitating professional aid in any one year. Internationally, it's not even 3% (and that number is over 18 years). That number is rising. Just for autism, 2.5% of Dutch kids are diagnosed with it, whereas international numbers are between 0.6% and 1%.