A lot of parents with overweight or obese children often think that a fat camp would do wonders for their child. They think that it’s their last option to get their child to lose weight. Unfortunately even though fat camps can be effective in making the child lose weight, the extra s tress of being in the program may also lead to your child attempting to kill themselves.
A lot of people don’t consider suicide a threat when it comes to their loved ones. They think it’s rare, and that it’ll never happen to someone they know. In reality suicide is quite a large problem in United States. There are over 1,100,000 people attempting suicide every year in United States, with more than 132,000 attempts done by children aged 15-24. On top of that there are over 17,000 attempts made by children aged 10-14. To put those numbers in terms easier to comprehend, that’s the population of about 12 colleges and 15 middle schools, trying to kill themselves every year.
Overweight children tend to be a higher risk group when it comes to suicide attempts. Overweight children have low self esteem issues, they get bullied by kids at school (and get made fun of for being overweight), and they tend to suffer from depression due in part to their social isolation(i.e. being picked last in gym, having few friends). All of these place them into a high risk category for suicide. So placing someone like that(who may already be suicidal) into a fat camp is a recipe for disaster and will increase the risk of suicide.
First let’s clarify something, there are weight camps and then there are fat camps/boot camps. The former will try to aim to lower your child’s weight through exercise and positive reinforcement, the latter will try to lower your child’s weight through exercise and negative reinforcement(put downs and verbal abuse). Both will make your child lose weight during the program, but one of them can do it without driving your child to the brink of suicide.
So if you are planning on placing your overweight child into a fat camp, find out whether or not they are suicidal. To do so, you need to learn all the potential suicide warning signs, so that you can identify whether or not your child is displaying signs that they are planning to kill themselves.