At frequent intervals there can be found in any of the large papers, a very brief note of the suicide of a child who had found life too much of a burden for him to bear and who, as a consequence, fell to brooding over his troubles and as the easiest way out of them, took his own life.  A Chicago boy attempted suicide by inhaling gas, although he was discovered before it was too late.  Another took his own life by shooting himself with a revolver given him some years ago as a birthday present; still another took poison as the easiest way out of his humiliation, embarrassment and despair.

The average age of these boys was about 16 1/2 years, which marks a period of intense self-consciousness and extreme sensitiveness of the youth to ridicule and disgrace.

Tendency to rapid progress:  The condition of the young person between the ages of 12 and 20 can hardly be considered to be normal in any way.  The physical processes are un-normal and are undergoing a change, and the mental faculties, too, are un-normal, overwhelmed as they are with new emotions and sensations.  The nervous condition is marked by a much higher nervous irritability, which contributes to a condition most favorable for the rapid progress of the speech disorder, always easily aggravated by a subnormal physical, mental or nervous condition.  Cases where the Intermittent Tendency is a pronounced characteristic are liable at this period to find the alternate periods of relief and recurrence to be more frequent than ever before and to note a marked tendency of their trouble to recur with constantly increasing malignancy.  Cases that at the age of 11 or 12, for instance, might have been said to have been in an incipient state, have commonly been known at this age to pass through the successive intermediate stages of the trouble and become of a deep-seated and chronic nature in a surprisingly short period of time.

In some cases where the transition from a simple to the complex form of the difficulty takes place at this age, it is found that the disorder has passed beyond the curable stage, in which case, of course, nothing is left to the unfortunate stammerer but the prospects of a life of untold misery and torture, deprived of companionship, ostracized from society and debarred from participation in either business or the professions.

Chances of outgrowing:  The chances for outgrowing a speech disorder at this age are considerably less than at any other time in the previous life of the individual.  The unbalanced general condition tends to make the stammerer more susceptible instead of less so.  As previously explained, this period marks the time when speech disorders progress rapidly from bad to worse and, as a consequence, the chances for outgrowing diminished from 1 per cent, before the age of 6 to practically zero after the age of 12.  Suggestions:  There is little that can be said for the good of the young person at these ages.