Parents are primed to spot the danger signs in their daughters perfectionist tendencies, eating disorders, self harming. Yet the suicide rate for teenage boys is more than three times higher than it is for girls

In some ways, the emerging picture of 'Wolverine Killer' Jed Allen seems horribly familiar an almost archetypal profile of a young man on the brink.

The 21 year old gardener from Didcot, Oxfordshire, suspected of murdering three family members before hanging himself earlier this month, had described himself as 'lonely', 'sad' and 'unloved'.

He was knife obsessed, he had struggled to find jobs since leaving school and, according to his online posts, was 'fed up with being treated like dirt' at work and by women.

Described by neighbours as the 'silent type', Allen loved screamo music (the aggressive offshoot of emo rock) and had retreated into a virtual world of violent computer games and rambling angry posts on social media.

It isn't hard to see similar patterns behind other horrifying headlines.

Last year, 22 year old Elliot Rodger replica van cleef and arpels alhambra earrings, whose father is British film maker Peter Rodger, killed six people in California before committing suicide like Allen, Rodger was an angry, isolated young man who had struggled through his teenage years and withdrawn from real life to live almost entirely online replica van cleef and arpels earrings alhambra.

Jed Allen at 14 with his half sister Derin. The troubled 21 year old described himself as 'lonely'

Adam Lanza, the 20 year old who fatally shot 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook elementary school, Connecticut, in 2012, had been another lonely teen.

He spent hours playing violent video games, covered his bedroom windows with black bin bags and allowed no one inside.

In the UK, schoolboy William Cornick, who was sentenced to life last November for the classroom murder of teacher Ann Maguire, was another 'internet loner'.

He used a picture of the grim reaper on his Facebook page where he'd posted his intention to murder his teacher, saying she deserved 'more than death'. No one took it seriously.

And perhaps that's not so surprising.

But William Cornick grew up in a loving, attentive home and was described by his year seven tutor as a 'delightful pupilpleasant, polite and cooperative with 100 per cent attendance'.

Though rare and extreme, all these cases show just how easily troubled teenage boys can slip below the radar, their problems left to gestate until they erupt in their late teens or early 20s.

According to the charity YoungMinds, around ten per cent of teenagers will experience some mental health issue; the charity estimates that 1.4 per cent of 11 to 16 year olds suffer from serious depression. In recent years, the media spotlight has been on teenage girls.

Parents are primed to spot the danger signs in their daughters perfectionist tendencies, eating disorders, self harming.

Yet the suicide rate for teenage boys is more than three times higher than it is for girls.

Perhaps it's easier to sympathise with a girl struggling to get her ten A stars while still being all things to all people. But a boy whose problems are less 'visible', who retreats into a virtual world and stops bothering about school?

The one who's unwashed, awkward and truculent on the rare occasions you pass in the hall? Is that something to worry about or is it better to keep out of his way, let him 'do what teenage boys do'? (YoungMinds' helpline team has a phrase, 'boys in bedrooms', because of the number of parents who call about this problem.)

Dr Alex Horne, an adolescent psychiatrist at the Nightingale Hospital in London replica van cleef and arpels stud earrings, finds that struggling boys particularly quiet ones can easily be overlooked.

Like Allen, Rodger was an angry, isolated young man who had struggled through his teenage years and withdrawn from real life to live almost entirely online

'A boy can withdraw quite a lot before anyone starts worrying,' he says. 'If they're not causing trouble, not getting into fights, few people will intervene.

'Boys tend to push their mothers away as they reach adolescence that's a normal part of growing up.

'But if a boy was emotionally closer to his mother when he was a child and this is often the case this can result in the father not knowing how to engage in an emotional discussion with his son when he reaches his teens. That creates a space for the boy to disappear into.'

Penny, 47, a part time editor, recognises this in her own family. Her son, now 16, was once an articulate, affectionate boy who loved cycling, Lego, Pokmon, and had friends he'd known since primary school.

'Now he's either at school or in his bedroom,' she says. 'No one calls for him any more. He'd happily spend eight hours a day playing computer games.