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Back to Subjects - Psychology

Suicide

Suicide The natural end of every human life is death. Some people, for reasons that have never been fully understood, choose to end their own lives. This is called suicide, which means literally “self-killing”. For all the uncertainty that has surrounded the phenomenon of suicide, this assessment of the problem is probably as accurate as any. The individual seemingly hopeless conflict with the world, decides to end his or her existence in what amounts to a final assault against a society that can no longer be tolerated. In so doing, the person tries to obtain a final revenge on everything and everyone that has caused their feelings of depression. Attempts at suicide, and suicidal thoughts of feelings are usually symptom indicating that a person isn’t coping, often as a result of some event or series of events that they personally find overwhelmingly traumatic or distressing. In many cases, the events in question will pass, their impact can be mitigated, or their overwhelming nature will gradually fade if the person is able to make constructive choices about dealing with the crisis when person is able to make constructive choices about dealing with the crisis when it is at its worst. Suicide is intentional self-inflicted acts that end in death. A self-destruction Suicide is the act or an instance of intentionally killing oneself. Suicide is applied to all cases of death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act of the victim himself, which he knows will produce this result. Suicide is a rarely ever a spur of the moment thing. The Susceptibility to suicide is lowest among those who have strong community ties. Today people continue to commit suicide for a variety of reasons: Love, insanity and chronic depression. There is usually a series of events and warming sign before an attempt is made. Suicide is not spoken much and is a topic that needed to be explored. Statistics on suicide attempts changes rapidly, that none can be stated with accuracy. To further understand suicide, we must take a look at the different reasons behind the act itself. Suicide in not a genetic disease, but rather a series of events that are very depressing or stressful. Without depression, most people would not attempt to take their own lives. Attitudes toward suicide vary from age to age and from civilization to civilization. Suicide is a serious problem in today’s society. Suicide is most common in teenagers and suicide also claims the lives of many adults. Suicide does not happen frequently but is highly recognized when it does happen. There are many solutions for people who feel that they have no choice but to commit suicide. Finding a solution can be easy as to taking a prescribed drug from a doctor. They’re many doctors that are trained to help people who are on the verge of suicide. People, who have experienced helplessness and hopelessness, see their lives as empty of meaning. People, who are hostile, want to punish people they see as villains and forget that the villain is even in existence. Some suicides can be accidental. Person may want to manipulate themselves to make people realize what they want or need. In doing so that person could accidentally go too far and kill himself or herself when they actually didn’t want to die. Drug abuse is another cause of suicide. The drugs themselves doesn’t make a person commit suicide, it’s the problems the person might have had that made them turn to drugs. Children who have grow up with feelings that they are weak and unable to cope with their surroundings, are more common to suffer suicidal behavior. Suicide is more common in teenagers than adults. The suicide rate among teenagers is not constant for a period of time; it keeps changing over time. Most of the time, the suicide rate among boys is greater that that among girls. There are various types of reasons why teenagers commit suicide. Suicide in teenagers is sometimes linked to, or in relation with vision therapy. It was argued that an inadequate level of concentration or short attention span of a patient is common cause for the academic, personality, and behavioral symptoms. Therefore, unless treated well, these symptoms might lead to committing suicide. The reasons for gay, lesbian, or bisexual adolescents committing suicide are a little different than other teenagers. They often lack peer support and positive role models, and therefore, find it difficult to establish a positive adolescent identity. As a result, a large number of them suffer from psychological dysfunction, running away, dropping out of school, prostitution, violence, AIDS or other sexually transmitted disease. Eventually, these dangerous behaviors sometimes lead them to suicide. Teenagers may also commit suicide if they are sexually or physically molested for a certain period of time. Also lack of moral parental support, an over-permissive educational climate, and doubtful economic prospects as placing pressures on the fragile ego and the still-unformed identity of teenagers. In addition to the usual stressors, gifted teenagers also comfort such issues as perfectionism, societal expectation to achieve, differential development of intellectual and social skills, and impotence to effect real-world changes. These kinds of difficulties sometimes make gifted teenagers to commit suicide. Another one of the most important reasons for teenage suicide is depression. Depression has a strong correlation with suicidal preoccupation than shyness, alienation, or academic performance. Also, chronic self-destructiveness in teenagers is related to depression and suicidal preoccupation. Both chronic self-destructiveness and depression are associated with suicidal ideation. Teenage years are a period of commotion. New social roles are being learned, new relationships are being developed, bodily changes are occurring, and decisions about the future are being made during the teenage years. Teenagers display warning signs of suicide. The indications come in two ways. First exhibited are the early warning signs. These signs include difficulties in school, depression, drug abuse, sleep and eating disturbance, and a loss of interest in activities. Restlessness, feelings of failure, overreaction to criticism, overly self-critical, angers, and preoccupation with death or Satan are also signals teenagers contemplating suicide will give. When a teenager is able to successfully commit suicide, they leave behind family and friends. In a normal death situation people usually feel grief. When a teenager performs suicide, family and friends left behind experience many feelings. A feeling of confusion is great distress over unresolved issues is very common. Family members and friends often feel anger and resentment after a suicide. These emotions can cause family and friends to become very isolated feeling. A friend or a family member may find that it is difficult to relate to other people after a suicide. These people may decide that other people view them as a failure because they were unable to stop someone close to them from killing themselves. A fear of forming a new relationship after a person has completed suicide is common. People feel that by creating new relationships, they might be hurt and experience the same pain they are going through. One question that seeks answer is; Why do people commit suicide? What can be done to avoid suicide? People usually attempt suicide to block unbearable emotional pain, which is caused by a variety of problems. It is often a cry for help. A person attempting suicide is often so distressed that they are unable to see that they have no other option: we can help prevent a tragedy by endeavoring to understand how they feel and helping them look for the better choices that they could make. Suicidal people often feel terribly isolated; because of their distress, they may not think of anyone they can turn to, furthering this isolation. In the vast majority of cases a suicide attemptor would choose differently if they were not in great distress and were able to evaluate their options objectively. Most suicidal people give warning signs in the hope that they will be rescued, because the are intent on stopping their emotional pain, not on dying. People who are suicidal are not crazy. Having suicidal thoughts does not imply that you are crazy, or necessarily mentally ill. People who attempt suicide are often distressed and the vast majorities are depressed to some extent. This depression may be either a reactive depression, which is an entirely normal reaction to difficult circumstances, or may be an endogenous depression, which is the result of a diagnosable mental illness with other underlying causes. It also may be a combination of two. The list doesn’t end here because we also have a major depression, dysthemia, bipolar depression, and seasonal affective disorder, post partum depression, atypical depression. What is depression? Being clinically depressed is very different from the down type of feeling that all people experience from time to time. Occasional feelings of sadness are a normal part of life, and it is that such feelings are often colloquially referred to as a “depression”. In clinical depression, such feelings are out of proportion to any external causes. There are things in everyone’s life that are possible causes of sadness, but people who are not depressed manage to cope with these things without becoming incapacitated. As one might expect, depression can present itself as feeling sad or “having the blues”. However, sadness may not always be dominant feeling if a depressed person. Depression can also be experienced as a numb or empty feeling or perhaps no awareness of feeling at all. A depressed person may experience a noticeable loss in their ability to feel pleasure about anything. Depression, as viewed by psychiatrists, is an illness in which person experiences a marked change in their mood and in the way they view themselves and the world. Depression as a significant depressive disorder ranges from short in duration and mild to long term and very severe, even life threatening. Depressive disorders come in different forms, just as do other illnesses such as heart disease. The one on the top is a Major Depression; one following is Dysthymia, then Bipolar Depression, Seasonal Affective Depression, Post Partum Depression, Endegnous Depression and Atypical Depression. Major depression is manifested by a combination of symptoms that interfere with ability to work, sleep, eat, and enjoy once-pleasurable activities. These disabling episodes of depression can occur once, twice or several times in lifetime. Dysthymia is a less severe type of depression, it involves long-term, chronic symptoms that do not disable, but keep you from functioning at “full steam” or from feeling good. Bipolar depression is also called manic-depressive illness, which involves cycles of depression and elation or mania. Sometimes the mood switches are dramatic and rapid, but most often they are gradual. When in the depressed cycle, you can have any or all of the symptoms of a depressive disorder. When in the manic cycle, any or all symptoms listed under mania may be experienced. Mania often affects thinking, judgment, and social behavior in ways that cause serious problems and embarrassment. Seasonal Affective Disorder is a pattern of depressive illness in which symptoms recur every winter. This form of depressive illness often is accompanied by such symptoms as marked decrease in energy, increased need for sleep, and carbohydrate carving. Post Partum Depression, mild moodiness and “blues” are very common after having a baby, but when symptoms are more than mild or last more than few days, help should be sought. Endogenous depression it occurs without a particular bad event, stressful situation or other definite, outside cause being present in the person’s life. Endogenous depression usually responds well to medication. Some authorities do not consider this to be useful diagnostic category. Atypical depression is not an official diagnostic category, but it is often discussed informally. A person suffering from atypical depression generally has increased appetite and sleeps more than usual. Depression is not a character flaw, nor is it simply feeling blue for a few days. Most importantly, depression is not your fault. It is a serious mood disorder, which affects a person’s ability to function in every day activities. It affects one’s work, one’s family, and one’s social life. There are as many potential causes of depression as there are people who suffer it. Depression is most often experienced as a depressed mood, which may sometimes be related to some recent, notable event, which occurred in one’s life. In a society where there are many stigmas and ignorance regarding mental illness, a person who feels suicidal may fear that other people will think they are “crazy” if they tell them how they feel, and so may be reluctant to reach out for help in a crisis. In any case, describing someone as “crazy”, which has strong negative connotions, probably isn’t helpful and is more likely to dissuade someone from seeking help which may be very beneficial, whether they have a diagnosable mental illness or not. People who are suffering from a mental illness such as schizophrenia or clinical depression do have significally higher suicide rates than average, although they are still in the minority of attemptors. For those people, having their illness correctly diagnosed can mean that an appropriate treatment can begin to address it. Does talking about suicide encourage it? Talking about the feelings surrounding suicide promotes understanding and can greatly reduce the immediate distress of suicidal person. In particular, it is OK to ask someone if they are considering suicide, if you suspect that they are not coping. If they are feeling suicidal, it can come as a great relief to see that someone else has some insight into how they feel. There are some sorts of things that can contribute to someone feeling suicidal. Like people can usually deal with isolated stressful or traumatic events and experience reasonably well. But where there is an accumulation of such events over an extended period, our normal coping strategies can be pushed to the limit. The stress or trauma generated by a given event will vary from person to person depending on their background and how they deal with that particular stressor. Some people are personally more or less vulnerable to a particular stressful events and some people may find certain events stressful which others would see as a positive experience. Furthermore, individuals deal with stress and trauma in different ways; the presence of multiple risk factors does not necessarily imply that a person will become suicidal. Depending on a person’s individual response, risk factors that may contribute to a person feeling suicidal include: -Relationships -Well being of self or family member -Job, school, university, house, locality -Death of a loved one -Loss of valued relationship -Loss of self esteem or personal expectations -Loss of employment -Emotional/Psychological Sometimes it is impossible to figure out a person or know what they are feeling. But you can see that on people you care about and are attached the most to them. Because suicidal people will give warning signs, consciously or unconsciously, indicating that they need help and often in the hope that they will be rescued. These usually occur in clusters, so often several warning signs will be apparent. The presence of one or more of these warning signs is not intended as a guarantee that a person is suicidal: the only way to know for sure is to ask them. In other cases, a suicidal person may not want to be rescued, and may avoid giving warning signs. This topic cannot go away, because it is such an important subject in our society. Suicide has traditionally been a taboo topic in western society, which has led to a further alienation and only made the problem worse. Even after their deaths, suicide victims have often been alienated by not being buried near other people in the cemetery, as though they have committed some utterly unforgivable sin. We could go a long way to reducing our suicide rate by accepting people as they are, removing the social taboo on talking about feeling suicidal, and telling people that it is OK to feel so bad that you’d think about suicide. A person simply talking about how they feel greatly reduces their distress; they also begin to see other options, and are much less likely to attempt suicide. Suicidal people, like all of us, need love, understanding and care. The main aspect of suicide is to understand the person who is feeling suicidal. Talking is probably the most reasonable way to change someone’s mind about suicide. Suicide is often extremely traumatic for the friends and family members that remain (the survivors), even though people that attempt suicide often think that no-one cares about them. In addition to the feelings of grief normally associated with a person’s death, there may be quilt, anger, resentment, remorse, confusion and great distress over unresolved issues. The stigma surrounding suicide can make it extremely difficult for survivors to deal with their grief and can cause them also to feel terribly isolated. Survivors often find that people relate to differently to them after the suicide, and may be very reluctant to talk about what has happened for fear of condemnation. They often feel like a failure because someone they cared so much about has chosen to suicide, and may also be fearful of forming any new relationships because of the intense pain they have experienced through the relationship with the person who has completed suicide. Too many people are killing themselves for reasons that can be easily solved. Suicide has been increasing over the years and it should be decreasing. Suicidal people see no other way out of their problems. These victims of emotions running rampant need lots of love and understanding. But what they need most is someone to really listen to them and tell them, “I do not want you to die”. Even the most severely depressed person has mixed feelings about death, wavering until the very last moment between wanting to live and wanting to die. Most suicidal people do not want death; they want the pain to stop. The impulse to end it all, however overpowering does not last forever. People have always killed themselves, for reasons that seemed good to them, and it has long been recognized that laws against suicide serve little or no purpose. This issue remains a live one with respect to euthanasia because it is plausibly pointed out that, if you have a legal right to commit suicide, and you physically unable to do so unaided, it seems unfair to prosecute someone who helps you. Suffering and suicides are perennial factors, but today’s conditions have added a host of other complications. The most important way to prevent suicide is to talk. Bibliography: Brown, A. (1996, winter) Mood disorders in children and adolescents. NARSAD ResearchNewsletter (Internet) Available: http://mhsource.com/advocacy/narsad/childhood.html Suicide Frequently asked questions: Available: ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/suicide/resources “Euthanasia” Microsoft Encarta 98 Encyclopedia 1993-1994 Microsoft Corp. “A Rational Approach to Rational Suicide” Joseph Richman, Ph.D. Suicide and Life-Threating Behavior, Vol 22, 1992. The American Association of Suicidology. “Grolier Encyclopedia” Concise Encyclopedia of Psychology, 2nd ed., Depressive Disorders: Facts, Theories, and Treatments Methods (Wiley, 1990) Compton’s Encyclopedia Online v3.0 1998 The Learning Company, Inc.

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