items of interest

with contributions from Rabbi Harold Kushner

Young people, sex, and suicide

In a survey of five hundred young people, some 93% of whom pray daily or weekly, approximately three-fourths (74%) said that sex before marriage is wrong. This figure is up from a 1994 survey, which revealed 68% did not feel that having premarital sex was the right thing to do.

On another front, nearly a fourth of those surveyed have considered suicide. When the findings were analyzed by grade, researchers found that 25% of high-school students—as contrasted with 18% of junior-high-school pupils—had had suicidal urges.

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