Grade schooler’s suicide draws attention to urban poverty

A mixture of her difficulty in coping with poverty, emotional problems, and her youthful innocence killed the 12-year-old grade schooler, a social worker said.

Grade 6 pupil Marianeth Amper, who committed suicide in the afternoon of All Souls’ Day in a room of their house in the sloping hills in Maa, has caught the national limelight as she was reportedly pushed to kill herself because of her family’s hunger and poverty.

Dalmin Faith Igaña, of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) who interviewed the family on Nov. 7, said Marianeth had reached a stage when she could no longer cope with the poverty around her. This was further exacerbated, the social worker noted, by the fact that the girl had nobody to whom she can express her feelings. Read the rest of the report on MindaNews.com.