Night Falls Fast Undertanding Suicide By Kay Redfield Jamison

Night Falls Fast Undertanding Suicide By Kay Redfield Jamison

“Encompass’d with a thousand dangers,

Weary, faint, trembling with a thousand terrors....I...in fleshy tomb, am

Buried above ground.”

-William Cowper

Suicide has long been interpreted, studied, and at many times ignored. The existence

of suicide and its whereabouts are not actually known. For the fact that no one knows

the first person who intentionally walked into a blizzard knowingly that they will not

return, or the first person who jumped off a cliff with intentions of not surviving. Nor

do we know the first person who had the sudden urge to commit harm to oneself. We

do not know this for the fact that the human mind is one piece of work and creation

that is still being misinterpreted today. These facts and many more are what Kay

Redfield Jamison, author of “Night Falls Fast, Understanding Suicide”, try’s to

convey and express to the reader. She directs her facts and studies towards teenagers

and young adults who seek the knowledge of why people do such harm to themselves.

Jamison expresses how the fact that what we do not know is what actually kills, also

how suicide is one of the most unpublicized deaths, and the varieties of mental illness

that plague the minds of so many to commit suicide

Jamison brings up the notion of how much we can determine about a person through heredity. We can determine if mental illness exists, if there is a history of impulsive and/or violent temperament and also the social class of a person. As stated “ It should not be necessary, at the end of a century so rich in literature, medicine, psychology and science, to draw arbitrary lines in the sand between humanism and individual complexities”. We do know though, what can drive a person to commit themselves to kill themselves to a certain extent. Such as romantic failures, economic and/or job setbacks, trouble with law or authority, illness, a situation that may seem to humiliate one, and so on. But the true meaning of why a person takes their life is only known to that person. As much history is known and as much of the personality of the person that is found out, the person dies leaving behind many who suffer throughout life not knowing why, and that is why what we do not know is what actually kills.

Murder, homicide, shoot outs, drugs, and accidents all contribute to the world wide effects of News.