- ..Just wanted to let you know that a young girl just wrote me a letter and told me that she was ready to end her life, but after going through my article she decided to live. Her life is very hard but I have hope for her. She wrote, "I was on your article, because I almost did it yesterday. Almost. It actually saved me."
I've read lots of articles on suicide, as I've tried to come to terms with exactly what it is that drives an apparently rational human being, sometimes someone who appears to be happy with everything going for them, to take their own life. One thing that I've concluded is that there are many different ways that someone can be driven to suicide.
One thing is for certain; suicidal thoughts are always precipitated by long or short-term periods of emotional or physical turmoil. However, those who attempt to commit suicide do not always do so amidst a big fanfare of showy emotionalism. They don't always mope around crying and sobbing before doing the deed. Sometimes suicidal thoughts come as a small, quiet voice in the dead of the night. Not a huge compulsion to do something terminal, but a quietly insistent suggestion from some destructive and deceptive part of your brain. And other times, suicidal thoughts come as a sudden impulse upon which people act before they have time to realize that they're not being rational. Before they realize that things won't always be as bad as they are now.
Sometimes such thoughts or compulsions come as a result of chemical imbalances in your brain causing depression and irrational thinking. Other times, they come as a result of emotional or physical assaults such as the death of a family member, splitting up with a partner, moving to a new, seemingly hostile town or school. Still other times, suicidal thoughts may come as a result of publicity in the media, from our peers or on the web.
I know it's not politically correct to talk about this, but I'm of the belief that people who've committed suicide, or to abused kids can actually place the thought of suicide so uppermost in people's minds that they might see it as a viable option ahead of getting counseling or talking to someone. My suggestion to you is to stay well clear of these rings. They may have started out as self healing, self-help circles, but rather than elevating the mood of the general community, they eat at everyone's psyche like a cancer, painting a falsely negative picture of the world in which we live. Bad things do happen in the world, it doesn't mean to finish our life, in two minutes.
The highest suicide rate in the world has been reported among young women in South India by a new study. The research is of major importance, according to the World Health Organization, as it brings to light Asia's suicide problem.The average suicide rate for young women aged between 15 to 19 living around Vellore in Tamil Nadu was 148 per 100,000. This compares to just 2.1 suicides per 100,000 in the same group in the UK.
Suicide is not a pretty picture.
It's very easy to create a glamorized view of suicide. You might imagine yourself being found, serene like you fell asleep, a note explaining to your sobbing friends and family how you couldn't take the pain and how sorry you are. You imagine you'll be missed and there'll be tributes, but that's only half the picture when it comes to suicide.
But it isn't like that. Suicide is frequently gory. Violent suicides leave blood and worse to clean up. It's traumatic, even for professionals to deal with. Less violent ones still end up soiling themselves in death. That's right - you'll shit and pee yourself. Sorry to be blunt, but you need to know the full picture.
This is not some scene from Romeo and Juliet: it's life and it's not pretty. Your suicide scene will be forever etched into the memory of those who find you. It's not a nice way to find someone, and it's not a nice way to be found. Your life is too important to throw away.
As for the aftermath, your friends may hold memorials, but many of them will forever be tortured by guilt and by questions. The newspapers will almost certainly not report your death because they have a policy against publicizing suicide. Many families are literally torn apart by the suicide of a child. The psychological reverberations of your death will hit the lives of many people around you like an explosion, and although they may continue to live, some of them may never, ever get over it. In fact, you should face the possibility that your death may affect people so profoundly that others may actually take their own lives as a result. It's not uncommon.
Now I know that a guilt trip is definitely not what you need when you're already feeling low, but you absolutely need to realize that there are repercussions that extend far, far beyond your own life. You also need to realize that there are almost certainly people who love you, right now. And even if that's not true and you've had a rough life, there are many people who care about you - many of them you haven't even met yet. Also,
there are literally hundreds of thousands of people in your country, who can love someone EXACTLY LIKE YOU. You'll probably never meet them all, but you only need to meet one or two to make your life incredible.
Suicide rates differ between boys and girls. Girls think about and attempt suicide about twice as often as boys, and tend to attempt suicide by overdosing on drugs or cutting themselves. Yet boys die by suicide about four times as often girls, perhaps because they tend to use more lethal methods, such as firearms, hanging, or jumping from heights.
And my heart goes out to those who are left behind, because I known that they suffer terribly. Children in particular are left under a cloud of "differentness," all the more terrifying because it can never be fully explained or lifted. The immediate family of the victim is left wide open to tidal waves of guilt, "What did I fail to do that I should have done? What did I fail to do that I should of done? What did I do that was wrong?"
To such grieving persons I can only say, "Lift up your heads and your hearts, surely you did your best. And surely the loved one who is gone did his best, for as long as he could. Remember, now that his battles and torments are over, do not judge him, and do not presume to fathom the mind of God where one is his children is concerned."