Suicide: Facts, Misconceptions, Causes, And Prevention

A sixteen-year old boy sat in his fourth period class crying because he had just broken up with his girlfriend. As he sat there, he tried to think of a way to ease the pain in his heart of the whole situation. His only conclusion was to try and take his own life. This is an attempt of suicide, which was luckily stopped because of a note that he had given to his girlfriend describing his plans that she, in turn, had given to the Guidance Counselor of the school. The truth is that an attempt of suicide is not always the person’s fault, there are several factors, which are contributed to the cause of suicidal thoughts, or feelings that lead to suicidal attempts, and with various treatment methods these conditions can be controlled not necessarily eliminated.

Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people ages fifteen through twenty-five. After making that statement one would come to the conclusion that this age group is responsible for the most suicides, but that is not true the elderly ages sixty-five and older account for more then twenty-percent of all suicides. Considering on average eighty-four people die a day from suicide, that means, that there is an elderly person dying every ninety minutes from suicide, and fifty-four percent of all elderly suicides are committed with a firearm, but after saying that consider this that the elderly only account for thirteen-percent of the U.S. population, and suicide is the eighth leading cause of death among the U.S. population (SAVE). Sixty-percent of suicides among young people are committed with a firearm, and more young people die from suicide than cancer, heart disease, AIDS, birth defects, stroke, pneumonia, influenza, and chronic lung disease combined (Centers for Disease Control).

There are plenty of misconceptions and myths, when it comes to understanding if someone is suicidal and if they already are what makes them that way. One myth is that someone who talks about suicide or jokes about it will not commit suicide. This is not true most of the time; someone who is going to commit suicide will give hints that they are going to do so. These hints are not necessarily as clear as we think they should be, but maybe that is because we

are too ignorant to see the warning signs that are put right in front of our face.