Thomas Szasz, a Hungarian psychiatrist prominent in the anti-psychiatry movement, once called suicide "a fundamental human right." He did not mean that killing oneself is morally desirable. "It only means," he wrote, "that society does not have the moral right to interfere."

Szasz didn't say whether his icy dictum applies to children and adolescents, who continue to kill themselves by the dozen in Canada. Among the sobering body count is Nadia Kajouji, the 18-year-old Carleton University student. Her apparent suicide has triggered a debate over privacy and whether Carleton did all it could to prevent her death, and has also shone a light on the chilling phenomenon of young people snuffing out their own short lives.

Kajouji may have been an adult in the eyes of the law, but, as any parent knows, not many 18-year-olds are grown-ups in the fullest sense. Add the stress of first-year university away from home, accumulated emotional trauma that was doubtless indescribable, and depression that may have been immune to treatment, and she became one of an average of 50 females between the ages of 15 and 19 who commit suicide in Canada each year.

Young? Consider numbers from Statistics Canada that shrink the scalp: In 2004, the last year for which figures are available, 17 boys and 11 girls between 10 and 14 - children - deliberately killed themselves in this country. According to the Canada Safety Council, for each suicide, there are 100 attempts, and more than 23,000 Canadians are hospitalized each year for them.

In Canada, suicide is the second leading cause of death among youth aged 15-24 (after accidental injuries) and the third leading cause among children aged 10-14 (outstripped only by unintentional injuries and cancer).

Notoriously, the situation is even more tragic among aboriginal children where, in youth aged 10-19, the suicide rate in 1995 was five to six times higher than among their non-aboriginal peers.

Suicide can trigger an array of reactions: Bewilderment, sympathy, anger, heroic glorification, moral or religious condemnation. For philosophers, states the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "suicide raises a host of conceptual, theological, moral, and psychological questions." For front line doctors, the issues are more concrete.

For one thing, they're noticing that the age of onset of depression - by far the leading cause of suicide - has declined over the past 15 years, while the illness's severity has risen. "Ten to 15 years ago, it would be very common for these things to be onsetting around age 17, 18 or 19," says Dr. Marshall Korenblum, psychiatrist-in-chief at Toronto's Hincks-Dellcrest Centre for children. "Now we're seeing it in 13-, 14- and 15-year-olds. And it's more severe than it used to be."

Paradoxically, though, mental health practitioners have made some progress in blunting the stigma of mental illness.

"We are getting better at earlier identification," Korenblum says. "It was there all along but because of shame or stigma, people weren't coming forward until later."

Still, one reason boys kill themselves at three times the rate of girls is old-fashioned machismo.

"Boys are just plain more reluctant to go for help," Korenblum says. "Going for help in a boy's mind implies weakness. You're a sissy or you can't handle this on your own. It's a big pride thing. They deny."

Which may be one reason the suicide rate for males aged 15-19 remained steady at around 14.7 per 100,000 people. For females in the same age group, it dipped in 2004 to 4.7 from a bit over five for every 100,000 Canadians.

Nadia Kajouji may well have fallen into a small, sad group of young people who don't respond to counselling and medication, and suffer from so-called treatment-resistant depression. Korenblum believes this group could represent between 10 and 20 per cent of kids in treatment. Going off to university is "a major" stress inducer, but "stress on families has risen. It's just taking its toll on kids, who are exposed to more and more things at younger and younger ages."

The other issue this story has raised - a victim's right to privacy - is a frustrating one for Ann Cavoukian, Ontario's information and privacy commissioner, who points out that laws do not prevent health officials from contacting the family of someone they believe is suicidal.

"Lots of people are depressed, of course," Cavoukian told the Star. "You don't want to be releasing information just because someone comes to you and they're depressed. Obviously, very sound judgment has to be exercised (by counsellors). It's a very hard call. But the law allows you to exercise that judgment because of what's at stake. And that's the bottom line.

"There's only one thing that trumps privacy: Life. Life and death trump privacy."