Suicides are a serious manifestation of human discontent with life that is particularly disheartening when carried out by young people. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) measures the rate of suicide in the country using a ratio that expresses the number of suicides per 100,000 people in the population for which the rate is reported. According to the CDC, death by suicide among younger groups is significantly lower than that of older groups, but it is the third leading cause of death among children between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four. Additionally, the CDC has compiled statistics that estimate suicides among males are nearly four times higher than females – 19.95 and 5.15, respectively. Some studies have even shown that city dwellers are at a greater risk of suicide than those in rural areas. In Jeffrey Eugenide's novel, The Virgin Suicides, he writes about a group of sisters (the Lisbon Sisters) who are essentially confined to their suburban home by their overly protective and oppressive mother and eventually, following her younger sister's lead, they commit suicide. There are many factors that could have led the group of girls to take their own lives, such as the lack of sufficient social opportunities due to their mother almost completely isolating them from the world outside the home or their exposure to the suicidal behavior of their sister, Cecilia . Furthermore, heir suicides could also be due to a mental disorder such as depression and bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, conduct disorder or anxiety, or an unknown past family history of suicide – although Eugenides did not mention this – but the real reason their suicide is never revealed. What remains is a group of girls who follow and dispute the statistical evidence collected today on suicides; that is, they were less likely to take their own lives as adolescents